We live in a culture where everyone is perfectly willing to do this [to make a lot of money], and they're just looking for the opportunity. Obviously, a person who is really dumb is not gonna make a zillion dollars. But for a person who is really smart, really smart, it's a boring pursuit. It's not endlessly fascinating.

modern science was largely conceived of as an answer to the servant problem and ... it is generally practiced by those who lack a flair for conversation.

In Rome people spend most of their time having lunch. And they do it very well - Rome is unquestionably the lunch capital of the world.

Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw. The second you meet someone that you're going to fall in love with you deliberately become a moron. You do this in order to fall in love, because it would be impossible to fall in love with any human being if you actually saw them for what they are.

I am a New Yorker. I like New York. And I like cities. And it's not my desire to make New York more suburban. I would personally just like to vet each person.

While it is undeniably true that people love a surprise, it is equally true that they are seldom pleased to suddenly and without warning happen upon a series of prunes in what they took to be a normal loin of pork.

In New York we have zillions of different kinds of people, many of them hate each other, but violence based on that hatred is really uncommon here.