“The word ‘charismatic’ was made for Fidel Castro. You would have liked him, I would have liked him. Then you had to stop and say, ‘Just a minute. This is a man who does not believe in freedom of the press…does not believe in democracy as we know democracy, had political prisoners.’”

New York is a galaxy of adventure at once elegant, exciting and bizarre. It’s a city that moves so fast, it takes energy just to stand still.

Large cocktail parties are an infamous technique for ridding yourself of social obligations to people you usually don’t know well or like much, which is such an unpromising beginning that I’ve rarely known one that recovered and turned into a great party.

The way you dress is the billboard that tells perceptive people how you feel about yourself.

When you’re interviewing someone, you’re in control. When you’re being interviewed, you think you’re in control, but you’re not.

I think most working relationships could benefit by excluding personal matters from the office chatter.

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.

For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth.

I didn’t get ahead by sleeping with people. Girls, take heart!

I don’t know about you, but I can never get enough David Letterman.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

Celebrities used to be found in clusters, like oysters – and with much the same defensive mechanisms.

Children are God’s way of punishing us for having sex.

A conversation isn’t a competition.

The origin of a modern party is anthropological: humans meet and share food to lower hostility between them and indicate friendship.

When your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.

You can’t allow the forces of political correction to shut you up. I mean, why are people afraid to say, ‘Merry Christmas?’ Give me a break. If people don’t like it, yeah, they can go do something else.

History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.

Whatever your years, there is in every being’s heart the love of wonder, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing childlike appetite for what next, and the joy and the game of life.

When I say ‘hip-hop is dead,’ basically, America is dead. There is no political voice. Music is dead.

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.

A candidate could easily commit political suicide if he were to come up with an unconventional thought during a presidential tour.

There is no such thing as a politically correct war.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends correspondingly to increase. And the dictator will do well to encourage that freedom…it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.