Of all the old maid's blessing, the greatest is carte blanche. Spinsterhood is powerful; once a woman is called "that crazy old maid" she can get away with anything.

Nothing is more likely to start me screaming like a madwoman than New York in February with its piles of blackened snow full of yellow holes drilled by dogs.

to a Southerner it is faux pas, not sins, that matter in this world.

Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it.

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.

Familiarity breeds democracry.

In social matters, pointless conventions are not merely the bee sting of etiquette, but the snake bite of moral order.