I'd tried to straighten him out, but there's only so much you can do for a person who thinks Auschwitz is a brand of beer.

there's a reason regular people don't appear on TV: we're boring.

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.

It can take years. With the first draft, I just write everything. With the second draft, it becomes so depressing for me, because I realize that I was fooled into thinking I'd written the story. I hadn't-I had just typed for a long time. So then I have to carve out a story from the 25 or so pages. It's in there somewhere-but I have to find it. I'll then write a third, fourth, and fifth draft, and so on.

They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.

If I were president, I would turn the tables and allow the fetus to abort its mother.

I'm not a reporter but the 'New Yorker' treats everyone like a reporter.