Biographical data, even those recorded in the public registers, are the most private things one has, and to declare them openly is... rather like facing a psychoanalyst.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is no accident that banks resemble temples, preferably Greek, and that the supplicants who come to perform the rites of deposit... and withdrawal instinctively lower their voices into the registers of awe. Even the most junior tellers acquire within weeks of their employment the officiousness of hierophants tending an eternal flame. I don't know how they become so quickly inducted into the presiding mysteries, or who instructs them in the finely articulated inflections of contempt for the laity, but somehow they learn to think of themselves as suppliers of the monetarized DNA that is the breath of life.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We may prepare food for our children, chauffeur them around, take them to the movies, buy them toys and ice cream, but nothing reg...isters as deeply as a simple squeeze, cuddle, or pat on the back. There is no greater reassurance of their lovability and worth than to be affectionately touched and held.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You have for company the best companion you will ever have--the modest, defeated, plodding workaday self which has a name and can ...be identified in public registers in case of accident or death. But the real self, the one who has taken over the reins, is almost a stranger. He is the one who is filled with ideas; he is the one who is writing in the air; he is the one who, if you become too fascinated with his exploits, will finally expropriate the old, worn-out self, taking over your name, your address, your wife, your past, your future.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What a wonderful faculty is memory!--the most mysterious and inexplicable in the great riddle of life; that plastic tablet on whic...h the Almighty registers with unerring fidelity the records of being, making it the depository of all our words, thoughts and deeds--this faithful witness against us for good or evil.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »