Letter from Paris

Paris is very beautiful this fall. It was a fine place to be quite young in and it is a necessary part of a man’s education. We all loved it once and we lie if we say we didn’t. But she is like a mistress who does not grow old and she has other lovers now. She was old to start with but we did not know it then. We thought she was just older than we were, and that was attractive then. So when we did not love her anymore we held it against her. But that was wrong because she is always the same age and she always has new lovers.

—Ernest Hemingway