Our memories are card indexes consulted and then returned in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.

Fallen leaves lying on the grass in the November sun bring more happiness than the daffodils.

Green leaves on a dead tree is our epitaph-green leaves, dear reader, on a dead tree.

There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.

We may assume that we keep people waiting symbolically because we do not wish to see them and that our anxiety is due not to being late, but to having to see them at all.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

The true index of a man's character is the health of his wife.

There are many who dare not kill themselves for fear of what the neighbours will say.

While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.

All charming people have something to conceal, usually their total dependence on the appreciation of others.

Henry liked fun and avoided when he could any solemn or serious matter, for he confused these with sorrow.

The best ad is a good product.

To transform experience and thought into language and narrative - that is beautiful even if that beauty is in brokenness.

I didn't serve on a committee that dealt with foreign policy.

The women one meets - what are they but books one has already read? You're a library of the unknown, the uncut. Upon my word I've a subscription.

God bless the good-natured, for they bless everybody else.

America is such a paradoxical society, hypocritically paradoxical, that if you don't have some humor, you'll crack up.

Avoid hot stocks in hot industries.

Overheard in a Washington D.C. church confessional: "Bless me Father, for sins have been committed."

How weird that must be, to stay the same as everyone else changes.