In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire.

Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.

She ate so many clams that her stomach rose and fell with the tide.

The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.

We are neurotically haunted today by the imminence, and by the ignominy, of failure. We know at how frightening a cost one succeeds: to fail is something too awful to think about.

Once you have money, you can quite truthfully affirm that money isn't everything.

There seems to be a terrible misunderstanding on the part of a great many people to the effect that when you cease to believe you may cease to behave.

It is the gossip columnist's business to write about what is none of his business.

True individualists tend to be quite unobservant; it is the snob, the would be sophisticate, the frightened conformist, who keeps a fascinated or worried eye on what is in the wind.

One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.

Individualism is rather like innocence: There must be something unconscious about it.

Exactly!" said Deep Thought. "So once you do know what the question actually is, you'll know what the answer means.

It sounds trite, but only because words make everything true sound trite. Because words always screw up what you're trying to say.

We could love and not be suckers. We could dream and not be losers. It was such a beautiful time. Everything was possible because we didn't know anything yet.

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Utopias are often just premature truths.

My first generation of young readers now have not only children, but some of them have grandchildren to whom they're introducing their old passion.

I just use [the camera]. I just pick it up like an axe when I've got to chop down a tree. I pick up a camera and go out and shoot the pictures I have to shoot.

Every sin brings its punishment with it.

When I lived in Jamaican I lived in Kingston, in Spanish Town, and when I go there the only place I want to go is Kingston because that's where the culture is the richest.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.