I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.

A lot of people don't know what they want, you know, or they're just kind of vague about it.

It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.

I think I became a better writer after I started writing for the New Yorker. Well, I know I did. And part of it was having my New Yorker editor and part of it is that was when I started really going on tour and reading things in front of an audience 30 times and then going back in the room and rewriting it and reading it and rewriting it. So you really get the rhythm of the sentences down and you really get the flow down and you get rid of stuff that's not important.

It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters.

Sometimes I say to myself, 'Oh, I wish I could win a Tony Award', although I'm not that bothered.

Each one of us is left to choose our own quality of life and take pleasure where we find it with the understanding that, like Mom used to say, sooner or later something's gonna get you.