“The nicest veterans, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who’d really fought.”

We’d been apart so long-I’d been dead so long, she said in English. I thought surely you’d built a new life, with no room in it for me. I’d hoped that.

And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.

Maturity, is knowing what your limitations are, Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn’t it such a relief to have somebody say that?

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

I went to a restaurant that serves ‘breakfast at any time’. So I ordered French Toast during the Renaissance.

Sugar free? With the name Sugarpova I don’t think I will be doing anything sugar free very soon.

I want you to buy this pit bull. This will protect your valuables.’ I don’t own anything very valuable. If I buy the pit bull, that would be the most valuable thing I own. I’d have to buy something to protect it then.

The other night I was lying in bed, looking up at the stars, and I wondered, ‘Where the hell is my roof?

It’s funny – sometimes the strongest individuals feel the worst when events are out of their control, and they can’t really be there for the people they love. I’ve felt it myself.

When I was in school the teachers told me practice makes perfect; then they told me nobody’s perfect so I stopped practicing.

I thought I’d begin by reading a poem by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.