Being neurotic seemed to be a kind of wild card, an all-purpose explanation.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.

No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.

My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

Women have a passion for mathematics. They divide their age in half, double the price of their clothes, and always add at least five years to the age of their best friend.

Here's some advice. Stay alive.

It isn't enough for you to love money - it's also necessary that money should love you.

Never let what is popular actually define your taste or interests.

Eternal boyhood is the dream of a depressing percentage of American males, and the locker room is the temple where they worship arrested development.

You are what you settle for.

If we (Lauren and Jim) ever get married, we're just going to put helmets on, run into each other from a hundred yards, and smash together like rams

When I was growing up, I said I wanted to be a model, but people said I had no chance and when I realized my ambition, people in the business still continued to state negative stuff.

All that is great cannot be possessed - and that is one of the most foolish things man goes on doing. We want to possess.

Just have a Coke or something and watch the boys go past.