Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human… - John Updike

History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.

I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.

This life is the one to be lived now, that much is crystal-clear. What did Thoreau supposedly say — ‘One world at a time’?