“Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.”

Our empathy for others as an excuse to underpay us.

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.

Love is love, but marriage is an investment.

Flesh is merely a lesson. We learn it & pass on.

I hope we don’t have to keep going back over the same territory and winning the same rights over and over again. The battle for birth control. The battle for abortion.

Of all the foolish Fears of Humankind, Fear of the Future is by far the most foolish.

A poem (surely someone has said this before) is a one-night stand, a short story a love affair, and a novel a marriage.

We are so scared of being judged that we look for every excuse to procrastinate.

Someday every woman will have orgasms- like every family has color TV- and we can all get on with the business of life.

Freedom is a loose leash, license to be different from your mother and still be loved…Freedom is…not insisting that your daughter share your limitations. Freedom also means letting your daughter reject you when she needs to and come back when she needs to. Freedom is unconditional love.

Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.

Really true intimacy is rare and it depends on other things besides sex.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.

There are no atheists on turbulent airplanes.

Art is always an energy exchange.

I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace.

I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap.

I’ve never had any illusions about being a lead actor in films, because lead actors have to be of a certain kind. Apart from the beauty of looks and figure, which I cannot claim to have, there’s just a particular kind of ordinary-Joe quality that a film star needs to have.

My mother had very humble beginnings – to put it mildly. Her dad built their home out of timber that he cut down on their land. No heat, no air-conditioning – ‘no foolishness,’ as he would call it.

I can read a four-page scene once and have it memorized. It’s a skill you learn in school: disposable cramming.

Ever since third grade, I had a notebook and was putting together words just for fun.

I ain’t ever had a job, I just always played baseball.

I learned that if I had known how much of this Nazi memorabilia there was to collect, I never would have started in the first place. It’s crowding me out of my house.