“Sophistication called for a variety of talents and attitudes, but the minimum requirement was being in New York. Not all New Yorkers achieved it, but nobody elsewhere had a prayer.”

a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.

A good-looking piece of scenery anywhere delights the eye and elevates the spirits. Some of us, crude creatures that we are, are merely excited; finer souls draw ethical and spiritual nutrients from the sight.

Hospitality, or flinging wide the door to friends and wayfarers alike, was once important, back in a world without motels or safety nets, where a friend might find his castle burnt down or a wayfarer find bandits on his trail.

I was getting sick and tired of being lectured by dear friends with their little bottles of water and their regular visits to the gym. All of a sudden, we’ve got this voluntary prohibition that has to do with health and fitness. I’m not really in favor of health and fitness.

Perhaps it’s a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet shoes and socks, for instance.

There is no ‘cat language.’ Painful as it is for us to admit, they don’t need one!

Visiting is a pleasure; being visited is usually a mixed or ambivalent joy. … The visitor can always go home; the visitee is already home, trapped like a rat in a drainpipe.

Almost any dog thinks almost any human is the Great Spirit, the Primal Creator, and the Universal Force Behind the Sun and Tides. What human can resist?