Learn to spot and avoid "writer groupies." The writer's self-sufficiency and our love for our work tend to attract insecure people who never can get enough love. They grow jealous of our work and come to regard it as a rival. These people can destroy you, so kick them out of your life or don't admit them in the first place.

because the theater lost a Barrymore every time a Southerner decided not to go on the stage, just about anything that comes out of a Southern mouth is bound to be a ringing line.

The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.

A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.

The vitamin has been reified. A chemical intangible originally defined as a unit of nutritive value, it was long ago reified into a pill. Now it is a pill; no one except a few precise scientists define it as anything else. Once the vitamin became a pill, it became real according to the precepts of American Cartesianism: I swallow it, therefore it is.

Hereditary monarchy offers numerous advantages for America. It is the only form of government able to unify a heterogeneous people. Thanks to centuries of dynastic marriage, the family tree of every royal house is an ethnic grab bag with something for everybody. We need this badly; America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home. We can't go on much longer depending upon disasters like Pearl Harbor and the Iranian hostage-taking to "bring us together.

Never look on the bright side. The glare is blinding.