...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.

But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

What folly made young people, even those in middle age, think they were immortal? How much better, their lives, if they could remember the end. Carrying your death with you every day would make it hard to waste time on unkindness and anger and bitterness, on anything petty. That was the secret: remembering your dying time, in order to keep the stupid and the ugly out of your living time.

If there was an abundance of misery in the world, there was also sufficient joy, yes - as long as one knew where to look for it.

There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.

Money can buy the necessary police order. Justice is sold to the highest bidder