The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth.

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.

Earth is the play ground of our children and their children. We cannot allow it to be the play ground of the nuclear arms of the evil forces.

Creativity is the art and science of expressing inner beauty.

I usually end have one outrageous minor character. He or she says the stuff I wish I had said in real life. Readers will love that character.

I'm romantic. I fall in love every day. Not with people but with situations. The other day, I saw a tramp polishing his shoes. That just gripped my heart.

Democrats need to become a 50-state party. You can't have a great party on the West Coast and the East Coast. You need to have a party in all 50 states.

I'm always looking for a kind of new musical entity to sort of move into a motion picture venue

Gold has no increasing value. And if you're really worried about, say, inflation rising, I would buy Spam. You know, you can eat Spam. You cannot eat gold.

The body weeps the tears the eyes never shed.

The heart is an organ of perception.

The personal is political, but only to a point.