When you consider how many millions of workdays begin with hangovers great and small, it is mildly ­surprising to find how few real descriptions of the experience our literature can boast.

An individual deficient in the sense of humor represents more of a challenge to our idea of the human than a person of subnormal intelligence

He's a man [George W. Bush] who is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is a man who is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.

Teasing is very often a sign of inner misery.

Solidarity is an attitude of resistance, I suppose, or it should be.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, 'He is not a lush.' That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, 'Look!'

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.