In America, if your next-door neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want one too. But in England, if your neighbor has a Rolls-Royce, you want him to die in a fiery accident. That's a quote from someone else, but there's something about American optimism, that feeling you can do anything if you're at least middle class in America. If I can have a writing career, anyone can. There's nothing special about me.

I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.

Writing helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk. Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won't get beyond the first sentence. It's better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I'll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you're writing humor.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.

whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.

I've always been very upfront about the way I write, and I've always used the tools humorists use, such as exaggeration.