I'm for prayer in the schools because ritual and ceremony are calming and civilizing, and the little fartlings should be tamped down whenever possible.

America is the only country in the world where you can suffer culture shock without leaving home.

"Very" is the most useless word in the English language and can always come out. More than useless, it is treacherous because it invariably weakens what it is intended to strengthen. For example, would you rather hear the mincing shallowness of "I love you very much" or the heart-slamming intensity of "I love you"?

The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.

There's something unrefined about a reading woman, they always reek of the lamp. How can she grow up to be a lady if she's always got her nose in a book? Granny Rudin

Kings and queens might do wicked things, but they don't nag. One thing I like about Bloody Mary: she never said a word about lung cancer.

One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outré artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses.