And when love is over when the diner of love seems closed from the outside you want all those hours back along with anything you left at the lover’s house and maybe a couple of things which aren’t technically yours on the grounds that you wasted a portion of your life and those hours have all gone southside.

When I was researching my very first novel, "The Basic Eight," I was calling right-wing political and religious organizations and asking them to mail me their material so that I could mock them in my novels.

Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant.

Can't we sleep ten minutes more? I was having a lovely dream about sneezing without covering my mouth, and giving everybody germs.

This is an absurd moral, for you and I both know that sometimes not only is it good to lie, it is necessary to lie.

Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping others with theirs.

There are some who say that sitting at home reading is the equivalent of travel, because the experiences described in the book are more or less the same as the experiences one might have on a voyages, and there are those who say that there is no substitute for venturing out into the world. My own opinion is that it is best to travel extensively but to read the entire time, hardly glancing up to look out of the window of the airplane, train, or hired camel.