Knowing and knowing what to do about it were two different things.

At the risk of appearing disingenuous, I don't really think of myself as 'writing humor.' I'm simply reporting on the world I observe, which is frequently hilarious.

And there comes a time in your life when you realize that if you don't take the opportunity to be happy, you may never get another chance again.

People sometimes get in the habit of being loyal to a mistake.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Have you ever noticed that when people use the expression 'I have to say', what follows usually needn't be said?

What if all everybody needed in the world was to be sure of one friend? What if you were the one, and you refused to say those simple words?

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Worse, I have to admit to feeling the jealousy of one crab for another that has managed to climb out of the barrel.

Bookstores, like libraries, are the physical manifestation of the wide world's longest, most thrilling conversation.

I was the one who did come through that door. You were the one she was waiting for.

If you can't give it all you've got, don't bother.

Are you ready to discover what is real?

Know how to choose. Most things in life depend on it. You need good taste and an upright judgement

For how can a man stand, unless he have something sure under his feet. Can a man tread the unstable water all his life, and call that standing? Better give in and drown at once.

Look, there is a sort of old view about class which is a very simplistic view that we have got the working class, the middle class and the upper class, I think it is more complicated than that.

Death from sin no power can separate.

Judo is a study of techniques with which you may kill if you wish to kill, injure if you wish to injure, subdue if you wish to subdue, and, when attacked, defend yourself

My wife said I look like a Latin American dictator. I said, 'That's what I am'

I am passionate about young women and advocating for them.

What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God. Which there isn't. I'm an atheist.