In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.

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.

Scream at the mangled leather carcass lying at the foot of the stairs, and my parents would roar with laughter. "That's what you get for leaving your wallet on the kitchen table.

I don't think my life is more interesting than anybody else's.

When her muzzle grew more white than brown, the chipmunk forgot that she and the squirrel had had nothing to talk about. She forgot the definition of "jazz" as well and came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity.

I rejected the word humorist for a long time because I thought that it meant you had, like, a cardigan sweater with patches on the elbows, but now I'm old and I do. I grew into that word. I think at heart, all this time, I've been a diarist. I'm not ashamed of it.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.