The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand.

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.

The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems.

It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

I have dozens of loyal fans! Baker's dozens! …they come in thirteens.

Pain withheld becomes hate, pain shared becomes love.

I've had plentiful opportunities for great things. Just didn't open my eyes.

It's simplicity itself that its future will be way worse than its past.

The only time I ever met a character that I wrote was when I met Ian McKellan, when he was playing Magneto in the 'X-Men' movies.

You look like a protagonist.

Always remember to judge everything by your inner feeling of bliss.

I never got into 'MacGyver,' but 'All the President's Men' and 'The Conversation' were big for me.

When my master and I were walking in the rain, he would say, 'Do not walk so fast, the rain is everywhere.'

A schoolmaster should have an atmosphere of awe, and walk wonderingly, as if he was amazed at being himself.