Things have changed very much, several times, since I grew up, and, like everyone in New York except the intellectuals, I have led several lives and I still lead some of them.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

Idle people are often bored and bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel. It is not accident that boredom and cruelty are great preoccupations in our time.

Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.

Lyda was an exuberant, even a dramatic gardener.... She was always holding up a lettuce or a bunch of radishes with an air of resolute courage, as though she had shot them herself.

Fear . . . is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born.

My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind—like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing.

No one ever confides a secret to one person only. No one destroys all copies of a document.

My capacity for having a good time exists. It surfaces, however, on odd occasions.

The whole magic of a plot requires that somebody be impeded from getting something over with.

Don't let anyone control how much, and who you give to-people have a way of spending your money

In order to have your voice be heard in Washington, you have to make some little contribution.

I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

Deviner avant de démontrer! Ai-je besoin de rappeler que c'est ainsi que se sont faites toutes les découvertes importantes.

Our hearts are lamps for ever burning.

If every cigarette you smoke takes seven minutes off of your life, every game of Dungeons & Dragons you play delays the loss of your virginity by seven hours.

The Lybian army is capable of destroying America and breaking its nose.

The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.