The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.

Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.

Discount my partiality, but my report is that so far The Winds of War is looking good.

This is an excellent martini — sort of tastes like it isn't there at all, just a cold cloud.

Some people think that all the equipment you need to discuss religion is a mouth.

The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness & success is the modest door of the public library. I found it to be so in my own life and work.

I felt there's a wealth in Jewish tradition, a great inheritance. I'd be a jerk not to take advantage of it.

The only true non-conformists are in the asylums; the only radically free spirits are in the death house awaiting the chair. We live by patterns.

Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.

This life is slow suicide, unless you read.

My attention determines the depth and quality of my experience.

A comely female inhabiting the Mohammedan Paradise to make things cheery for the good Mussulman, whose belief in her existence marks a noble discontent with his earthly spouse, whom he denies a soul.

I love the one who punishes me well.

I just finished writing an essay about William Maxwell, an American writer whose work I admire very much.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Man may his fate foresee, but not prevent. 'Tis better to be fortunate than wise.

Never do nothing you wouldnt want printed on the front page of The New York Times.

He is mad past recovery, but yet he has lucid intervals.

When my daughter was born she had jaundice, she was small, round and yellow. we called her Melony.

You want to take some responsibility for you choices so that it sets the groundwork for that next generation of actresses.