Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people-- people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.

The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest.

Old age is a special problem for me because I've never been able to shed the mental image I have of myself - a lad of about 19.

Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.

Never hurry and never worry!

We are such docile creatures, normally, that it takes a virus to jolt us out of life's routine. A couple of days in a fever bed are, in a sense, health-giving; the change in body temperature, the change in pulse , and the change of scene have a restorative effect on the system equal to the hell they raise.

Understanding humor is like dissecting a live frog. It can be done, but the frog tends to die in the process.