A new regulation for the publishing industry: "The advance for a book must be larger than the check for the lunch at which it was discussed.

Although I grew up in Kansas City, ... I have always kept more or less au courant of Texas barbecue, like a sports fan who is almost monomaniacally obsessed with basketball but glances over at the N.H.L. standings now and then.

"Law professors were never like economics professors," a Harvard Law professor told me. "If you disagreed with someone, you didn't call him a fool."

When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere.

The way I read Billy Carter's testimony, he was a model citizen himself until the voters went and ruined his life by making his brother President.

Do my ears deceive me, or can I actually hear the sounds of worms turning? You say a turning worm makes no sound? But how about a chorus of turning worms?

There is a theory that sooner or later anything in America that is any fun at all will be ruined by people from California.