“It is not a bad thing that children should occasionally, and politely, put parents in their place.”

Hope costs nothing.

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge.

There are no ordinary cats.

Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.

I want nothing from love, in short, but love.

If I can’t have too many truffles, I’ll do without truffles.

I went to collect the few personal belongings which. I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.

My true friends have always given me that supreme proof of devotion, a spontaneous aversion for the man I loved.

You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.

Writing only leads to more writing.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer’s forehead.

At sixty-three years of age, less a quarter, one still has plans.

If he’s getting married, he’s not longer interesting.

I’ve entered the world of wine without any professional training, but a definite appetite for good bottles.

I always see to the dogs first and leave the cats and the occasional birds and rabbits and hamsters for later. It isn’t that I play favorites, it’s just that dogs are needier than other pets.

The greatest act of faith we are capable of is that of loving another more than we love ourselves, and occasionally we can be quite good at it.

Courage is required not only in a person’s occasional crucial decision for his own freedom, but in the little hour-to-hour decisions which place the bricks in the structure of his building of himself into a person who acts with freedom and responsibility.

What I find interesting is how close you can run the laughter along the seam of seriousness, and occasionally cross it, so that half the house genuinely doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

The basic human rhythm of petty malevolence, sordid moneygrubbing, and official violence, illuminated by occasional bursts of loyalty or desire or tenderness, will go on.

My mom was on welfare and the occasional food stamp, but I have never participated in any of those governmental programs, even the ones that kind of work like education, scholarships and whatever, and I managed to do just fine.

I think it’s a novelty for cartoon characters to cross over into another strip or panel occasionally.

I meant every word I said. And I hate that it would mean so much to me, to know that I cross your mind occasionally.