Trust

The first one was that the ideal conditions for business were never given. One had to create them.

that self-interest, if properly directed, need not be divorced from the common good,

(we make our own weather; personal gain ought to be a public asset)

the closer one is to a source of power, the quieter it gets. Authority and money surround themselves with silence, and one can measure the reach of someone’s influence by the thickness of the hush enveloping them.

know the days ahead of me are fewer than those I have left behind. There is no escaping this most basic fact of accounting. A certain amount of time is allotted to each of us. How much, only God knows. We cannot invest it. We cannot hope for a return of any kind. All we can do is spend it, second by second, decade by decade, until it runs out. Stil

Should’ve done as so many times before: nudge him gently enough in the right direction so he could believe he was in command.

He brimmed with that most conventional and embarrassing of qualities—“taste.”

Kitsch can also be in the eye: “The sunset looks like a painting!” Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former’s beauty.

She was particularly interested in living authors, although she initially refused to meet them, knowing the distance between the work and the person could be covered only by disappointment.