Do you realize how angry you sound?” must be one of the most infuriating questions in the language.

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.

A man’s weakness is his family and a woman’s is her child

Happiness is there where wants and needs are small, but the desire to give is big.

The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth

First, we could have defied both of them and could have gone to war against both of these nations for this violation of international law and interference with our neutral rights.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

The maxims tell you to aim at perfection, which is well; but it's unattainable, all the same.

Clutter-clearing is modern-day alchemy.

I am not a huge follower of music and tend to like one CD and play it to death, usually when I am washing up.

If there's a Devil, that mean's there's a God.

Looks like somebody's got jungle fever.' 'That's not even the right kind of racist.