“I don’t believe the writer should know too much where he’s going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.”

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.

Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.

Let the meek inherit the earth — they have it coming to them.

I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.

I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.