There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues. That is all.

God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.

Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one's own Trojan horse.

The main difference between men and women is that men are lunatics and women are idiots.

There is no logical reason why the camel of great art should pass through the needle of mob intelligence.

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

Writing has nothing to do with communication between person and person, only with communication between different parts of a person's mind.

Come let us give a little time to folly ... and even in a melancholy day let us find time for an hour of pleasure.

When you get to my age life seems little more than one long march to and from the lavatory.

If revenge is sweet, why does it leave such a bitter taste? In disarming Peter, Christ disarmed ever knight. Turn the other cheek.

Aristotle [would] probably conclude most Americans, for all intents and purposes, are slaves.

Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse.

Jesus was God and man in one person, that God and man might be happy together again.

It was only the vulgarly mediocre that repelled her.

Well, I think the global economy is in the position for continuing good growth with inflation well in check.

I plan on getting out there and mixing with the crowd. I want to show everyone what happens in Times Square not from a distance, but from right there in the crowd.

Every leap forward that I make is by reaching back and firmly getting a footing in the past, and pushing forward as hard as I can.