There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

There is something about seeing real people on a stage that makes a bad play more intimately, more personally offensive than any other art form.

To choose a writer for a friend is like palling around with your cardiologist, who might be musing as you talk to him that you are a sinking man. A writer's love for another writer is never quite free of malice. He may enjoy discussing your failures even more than you do. He probably sees you as tragic, like his characters - or unworthy of tragedy, which is worse.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.

There was a time when we expected nothing of our children but obedience, as opposed to the present, when we expect everything of them but obedience.