"Greek culture was competitive. Each successive historian and philosopher made a point of showing how he improved on his predecessor."

"Samuel Spade’s jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v moti…"

"Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left."

"Man reaches the highest point of lovableness at 12 to 17 — to get it back, in a second flowering, at the age of 70 to 90."

"Before I became a Marxist in 1924, I was in favor of pantheism, Zhuangzi, the Indian Buddhist thought of the Upanisads, and the Western philosopher Spinoza. I felt close to Johann W. Goethe also becau…"