The thing to remember is that children are temporary. As soon as they develop a sense of humor and get to be good company, maybe even remember to take the trash out and close the refrigerator door, they pack up their electronic equipment and their clothes, and some of your clothes, and leave in a U-Haul, to return only at Thanksgiving.

New York was where we wanted to live when we were finally grown up, and drink martinis and stay out past bedtime.

Subtly, in the little ways, joy has been leaking out of our lives. The small pleasures of the ordinary day seem almost contemptible, and glance off us lightly...Perhaps it's a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet shoes and socks, for instance. Bathrobes. Yawning and stretching. Real tomatoes.

The United States government, in figuring our gross national product, defines 'durable goods' as anything that will last three years.

Exercise, to qualify at all, must be lonely, painfu, humorless, and boring.

The nostalgic notion of the family orchards is lovely - all that wholesome fruit for our forebears to sit on the back steps biting into - but basically we were growing it to drink.

Success in war was the only success that counted; failure was a disgrace to be wiped out only by starting another war and winning it.