When I started publishing, I got offers to write for big magazines. But I would always say, "Well, it's not that I don't want to write for these big magazines, but you can't edit it."

To lose yourself in a book is the desire of the bookworm. I mean to be taken. That is my desire.

My desire to curtail undue freedom of speech extends only to such public areas as restaurants, airports, streets, hotel lobbies, parks, and department stores. Verbal exchanges between consenting adults in private are as of little interest to me as they probably are to them.

Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn't have to put them in prisons?

I'm like the laziest person who ever lived. It's amazing to me I even sit up.

How do you know if your child is a writer? Your obstetrician holds his stethoscope to your abdomen and only hears excuses.

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.