I can't say this too often - that a little humor can make life worth living. That has always been my credo. Somebody once asked me, 'What would you like your epitaph to be?' I've always said that I'd like it to be: He left people a little happier than they were when he came into the room.

Banquet: a plate of cold, hairy chicken and artificially coloured green peas completely surrounded by dreary speeches and appeals for donations.

Good manners: The noise you don't make when you're eating soup.

The fact that we don't read more books in America can be traced squarely to the fact that we have newspapers that are about a hundred times as big as the newspapers anywhere else.

Middle age is when your old classmates are so grey and wrinkled and bald they don't recognize you.

One of the greatest threats facing book publishing, and the entire country for that matter, is censorship.

Do I believe in ghosts? Of course I do. So do you. Deep in the souls of the most sophisticated of us is lurking a fear of the supernatural which all the discoveries of scientists cannot eradicate.