The urge for Chinese food is always unpredictable: famous for no occasion, standard fare for no holiday, and the constant as to demand is either whim, the needy plebiscite of instantly famished drunks, or pregnancy.

I kneel to my Lord because I am such a failure. I pray, I hope, I look to the Gospels.

Faculty Meetings are held whenever the need to show off is combined with the imperative of accomplishing nothing.

Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.

It's true, you can never eat a pet you name. And anyway, it would be like a ventriloquist eating his dummy.

The parrot holds its food for prim consumption as daintily as any debutante, [with] a predilection for pot roast, hashed-brown potatoes, duck skin, butter, hoisin sauce, sesame seed oil, bananas and human thumb.

Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.