A despot doesn't fear eloquent writers preaching freedom- he fears a drunken poet who may crack a joke that will take hold.

Advice from this elderly practitioner is to forget publishers and just roll a sheet of copy paper into your machine and get lost in your subject.

The world likes humor, but it treats it patronizingly. It decorates its serious artists with laurel, and its wags with Brussels sprouts.

I’ve got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty—everything I don’t like. How can I learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?

Whatever else an American believes or disbelieves about himself, he is absolutely sure he has a sense of humor.

Liberty is never out of bounds or off limits; it spreads wherever it can capture the imagination of men.

Write about it by day and dream about it by night.