I can't seem to fathom that the things important to me are not important to other people as well, and so I come off sounding like a missionary, someone whose job it is to convert rather than listen.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Nature's deepest laws, her only true laws, are her invisible ones.

An incompetent teacher is even worse than an incompetent surgeon because a surgeon can only cut up one person at a time.

Worrying is using your imagination to create something you don't want.

At the end of a down day on Wall Street, we all need to be able to sleep peacefully at night. That comfort won't come from our bank balance.

My biggest regret was letting my lifetime average drop below .300. I always felt I was a .300 hitter, and if I could change one thing that would be it.

I am not afraid to say my relationship with my man is important, even vital, to who I am as a person.

I didn't know the organization, but the one thing you can say about the FBI, it's tremendously professional.

All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.

I don't relax. My main relaxation is meeting illustrators and publishers in restaurants and bars.

Never invest in a business you don't understand.