I should have been bolder and kissed her at the end. I should have been more cautious. I had talked too much. I had said too little.

Arrived at an age when others had already long been married and had children and held important positions, and were obliged to produce the best that was in them with all their energy, I still regarded myself as youthful, a beginner who faced immeasurable time, and I was hesitant about final decisions of any kind.

Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it.

Inexperience can be overcome, ignorance can be enlightened, but prejudice will destroy you.

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.

But the character of the music emphasized the tale as allegory--humorous, poignant, humane allegory--disclosing the metamorphosis of life itself, in which man moves from confident inexperience through the bitterness of experience, toward the rueful wisdom of self-knowledge.

Optimists are usually inexperienced.

He held out a shaky and worn hand and she met it with one of her young and inexperienced ones.

You can never make someone like something they don't like, but you can always help them to better understand it.