When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.

All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable.

Communism requires of its adherents that they arise early and participate in a strenuous round of calisthenics. To someone who wishes that cigarettes came already lit the thought of such exertion at an hour when decent people are just nodding off is thoroughly abhorrent.

Smoking is the great romance of my lifetime. If I could find someone I wanted forty-five times a day, perhaps I could stop.

When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.

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.