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

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.

Reading is a pleasure of the mind, which means that it is a little like a sport: your eagerness and knowledge and quickness count for something. The fun of reading is not that something is told to you, but that you stretch your mind. Your own imagination works along with the authors, or even goes beyond his, yields the same or different conclusions, and your ideas develop as you understand his.

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

I think it's become fashionable for the snobbish egghead today to make fun of television. I've heard many people, boast, "I would never have a television set in my house," well, these people are fools.

Oratory is the art of making a loud noise sound like a deep thought.

Television, I love it, everything that happened before television lumped together, never caused folks to turn on a street to stare at me, or waitresses to ask for autographs.