No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.

there are two kinds of music - good music and bad music. Good music is music that I want to hear. Bad music is music that I don't want to hear.

If food did not exist it would be well-nigh impossible to get certain types off the phone, as one would be unable to say, 'Look, I've got to run but let's have dinner sometime soon.'

Your grandparents did not endure the indignities of a steerage journey to Ellis Island so that you could stand outside a discothèque and beg a wallpaper designer to take you in with him.

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."

I stopped taking drugs when I was 19, and who wants to drive a cab around New York with drugs in their car?

New York's not exactly antiseptic. It could be clean and less dangerous, and not horrible, not under a tidal wave of tourists.