I'm so old that when I started keeping a diary they were in actual books, and I think that's one the reasons that I've never written about sex. Because early on you had to worry that someone was going to find your diary, so it's bad enough to be writing like Joan Didion, but writing like Joan Didion about sex acts you'd performed with somebody you had known for 20 minutes, that's a bit worse. So I would write in my diary, "I met J. and we had sex five times last night." But I would never write about what we did.

I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.

He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone.

The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention

Hugh returned from his trip, and days later I still sounded like a Red Chinese asking questions about the democratic hinterlands. "And you actually saw people smoking in restaurants? Really! And offices, too? Oh, tell me again about the ashtrays in the hospital waiting room, and don't leave anything out."

I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.

At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.