Nothing could be more reckless than to base one's moral philosophy on the latest pronouncements of science.

Readers, not critics, are the people who determine a book's eventual fate.

Mexico: where life is cheap, death is rich, and the buzzards are never unhappy.

Going to bed with Gertrude Stein, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Susan Sontag, or Margaret Thatcher: There are some things one prefers neither to do nor to have done.

Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.

If you feel that you're not ready to die, never fear; nature will give you complete and adequate assistance when the time comes.

A life without tragedy would not be worth living.