Los Angeles is the nation's cultural scapegoat.

Panic is efficient. Panic is effective. Panic is the way I get things done! Panic attacks are my booster rockets!

All autobiography is fiction.

When faced with writer's block, lower your standards and keep going.

living in Los Angeles was like being an extra in a movie that was starring other people entirely.

Almost 50 years old now, some 30 years after graduation, I look at my Caltech classmates and conclude that math whizzes do not take over the world.

Typically, middle-class educated parents' search for their children's schools takes on the feel, if not of teen girls trying on different outfits, of adolescents trying on various selves.

In the end, the real wisdom of menopause may be in questioning how fun or even sane this chore wheel called modern life actually is.

I have always been afraid... Always been pretending to follow you closely, alwyas been pretending to sharpen my teeth, when the truth is, I am ... scared to death just treading on your shadow.

I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.

Stock kernels will be the norm for some time.

But when on shore, & wandering in the sublime forests, surrounded by views more gorgeous than even Claude ever imagined, I enjoy a delight which none but those who have experienced it can understand.

I really don't care what people think of me.

It's true that America can't solve every problem, but I don't know of any major problem in the world that can be solved without us.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

It is our care for the helpless, our practice of loving kindness, that brands us in the eyes of those who oppose us.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure - the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

Here Eddie, hold the flag while I putt out.