He claimed his modest share of the general foolishness of the human race.

Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality.

The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.

One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve.

Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere.

Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.

Good readers make much out of little.

The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.

The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.

No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society

But you're the only one, Scarlet. You'll always be the only one.

Life is not waiting for you. This moment is your life, so love it, live it, and enjoy it.

You cannot find what God has hidden

You can't cut down someone who's already in the gutter.

And, I wouldn't consider myself to be a natural pilot; I've had to work at it.

The girl voice is always going to kill because they don't expect it.

Don't be afraid of opposition. Remember, a kite rises against, not with, the wind.

Half talent is no talent.

I think I missed my window." "What window?" "My get-a-life window. I think I was supposed to figure all this stuff out somewhere between twenty-two and twenty-six, and now it's too late.

Creative thinking may mean simply the realization that there's no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done.