“History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.”

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death… others through sheer inability to cross the street.

Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.

The unicorn is a mythical beast.

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

Americans want to go to heaven without dying.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.

If you wonder which is the stronger sex, watch which one twists the other around her little finger.

I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing’s fun. You’re getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.