Sophistication called for a variety of talents and attitudes, but the minimum requirement was being in New York. Not all New Yorkers achieved it, but nobody elsewhere had a prayer.

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

Coaches and headmasters praise sport as a preparation for the great game of life, but this is absurd. Nothing could be more different from life. For one thing sports, unlike life, are played according to rules. Indeed, the rules are the sport: life may behave bizarrely and still be life, but if the runner circles the bases clockwise it's no longer baseball.

Perhaps it's a good time to reconsider pleasure at its roots. Changing out of wet shoes and socks, for instance.

a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.

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

A catless writer is almost inconceivable.