Travels with My Aunt

by Graham Greene

Perhaps it is freedom, of speech and conduct, which is really envied by the unsuccessful, not money or even power.

Brilliant

A long life is not a question of years. A man without memories might reach the age of a hundred and feel that his life had been a very brief one.

‘You must surrender yourself first to extravagance,’ my aunt replied. ‘Poverty is apt to strike suddenly like influenza; it is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for bad times.

Christmas, it seems to me, is a necessary festival; we require a season when we can regret all the flaws in our human relationships: it is the feast of failure, sad but consoling.