“People sinking into self-pity and depression are dreary, but they can’t get out of it by themselves. So every now and then, just sit there and listen, and listen, and listen. You’re paying your membership dues in the human race.”

I also found that for myself, since I’ve had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

Most of us have trouble juggling. The woman who says she doesn’t is someone whom I admire but have never met.

Most attractive males talk to most attractive women as if they were Rotarians comparing sales percentages in Des Moines.

Small children do not belong at an adult party, and especially should not be used like trained midgets to help serve martinis.

The news media in general are liberals.

Just do your job. Get in early. Stay late, and don’t complain. Fight the big fights.

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.

National pride has no need of the delirium of race.

Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race. I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration.

My favorite subject was recess. Fortunately for me, I had a mother who believed I was smart.

We’re all mad, the whole damned race. We’re wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we’re all mad and in solitary confinement.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.

Toyin Falola has given us what is truly rare in modern African writing: a seriously funny, racy, irreverent package of memories, and full of the most wonderful pieces of poetry and ordinary information.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.