Communists all seem to wear small caps, a look I consider better suited to tubes of toothpaste than to people.

If people don't want to listen to you, what makes you think they want to hear from your sweater?

It would also have been helpful to have gone to a Catholic grammar school. The only people who know grammar are those people who went to Catholic grammar school. Those nuns beat it into them.

China is not a great idea: capitalism and a dictator. It's like the two worst possible things you could imagine together. It's a very bad idea.

Money...buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is; the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors.... The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is.

The main symptom of falling in love is that you lose your intellectual prowess.

Writers get exactly the right amount of fame: just enough to get a good table in a restaurant but not enough so that people are constantly interrupting you while you're eating dinner.