I don't think I'm a witty person. To me, a witty person is a funny person who is also a smart person. My friend David Rakoff, who died a few years ago, he was a witty person. Fran Lebowitz is a witty person. I don't think there are that many witty people around, so you tend to notice them when they do come around. I don't consider myself to be that.

College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking.

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

I was just struggling with my inner vachette and pondering the depths of my own inhumanity.

I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they're not living in a democratic nation. People stand in line for two houres and they go over the edge.