I don't like travelling if I know I have to write about it.

Sometimes with 'The New Yorker,' they have grammar rules that just don't feel right in my mouth.

I always say to young people, "Get the hell out of the United States." Especially if you're young, like if you're 21 or something. Let's say you don't speak any Italian. You're 21. Everyone's going to want to sleep with you and be nice to you. And the best way to learn a language is to sleep with someone from that country.

It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate.

I’d always been afraid of sick people, and so had my mother. It wasn’t that we feared catching their brain aneurysm or accidentally ripping out their IV. I think it was their fortitude that frightened us. Sick people reminded us not of what we had, but of what we lacked. Everything we said sounded petty and insignificant; our complaints paled in the face of theirs, and without our complaints, there was nothing to say.

Paul Rudnick is a champion of truth (and love and great wicked humor) whom we ignore at our peril.

but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.