whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

It is not your love that sustains the marriage, but from now on, the marriage that sustains your love.

Her figure is harder to ignore than a ringing telephone.

The older you get, the funnier fart jokes are.

You are more powerful than any fearful force. Your Divine willingness can out-will any darkness that the world has ever seen.

The wise hand doth not all that the foolish mouth speakes. [The wise hand doth not all that the foolish mouth speaks.]

The fact that somebody is reducing your salary is just telling me they're not satisfied with what you're doing.

Great lovers realize that they are what they are in love with.

It makes a great difference in the force of a sentence, whether a man be behind it or no.

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

I should have the courage of my lack of convictions.