“The short story packs a self in a few pages predicating a lifetime”

Children were strangers you loved because you could love. If they gave back love when they were grown you were ahead of the game.

The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course

… it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is entitled to good fortune.

Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.

If you ever forget you are a Jew a goy will remind you.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist.

(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.

If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.

I sometimes confuse myself with the little I know.

As long as a man stays alive he can’t tell what chances will pop up next. But a dead man signs no checks.

We have in my country (Russia) a quotation: “It is impossible to make out of apology a fur coat.

First drafts are for learning what your story is about.

Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

All men are Jews, though few men know it.

You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.

One’s fantasy goes for a walk and returns with a bride.

I come around to your house personally and wet your finger while you’re turning the pages.

After the Democrats shoved the 2700 pages of ObamaCare down our throats – and we did find out how expensive, controlling, and coercive the legislation was – a majority of Americans wanted the Supreme Court to toss it aside as unconstitutional.

I’ve never read a kayak manual, but I’m pretty sure page one says ‘Use in water.’

Television can stir emotions, but it doesn’t invite reflection as much as the printed page.

When you go to a great concert something that happens is there is a deep sense of communality and connectedness one to another – as though we are all looking to eachother and saying yeah, we get it, we’re all on one page.

Indians were here first – it’s about time. We’re way behind the African Americans and Hispanic Americans in getting politically involved, but we’re beginning to take a page out of their notebook.

When good news about the market hits the front page of the New York Times, sell.

He comic page is dying; I didn’t want to go with it.