The city is like poetry; it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

A library is many things, but particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books... Books hold most of the secrets of the world, most of the thoughts that men and women have had.

I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that does not have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular.

New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

The circus comes as close to being the world in microcosm as anything I know; in a way, it puts all the rest of show business in the shade.

In every queen there's a touch of floozy.