It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.

Obscenity is a notable enhancer of life and is suppressed at grave peril to the arts.

The ingenuities we practice in order to appear admirable to ourselves would suffice to invent the telephone twice over on a rainy summer morning.

I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.

The guns of the big events rumble through our pages, but the tiny firecrackers are constantly hissing and popping there as well; it appears that much of my life as a journalist has been devoted to sedulously setting off firecrackers.