Not writing is probably the most exhausting profession I've ever encountered. It takes it out of you. It's very psychically wearing not to write - I mean if you're supposed to be writing.

The 3 questions of greatest concern are:, 1) Is it attractive?, 2) Is it amusing?, 3) Does it know its place?

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.

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.

No one I knew talked about money. It's not an area of interest.

Writing is so hard. Why would you be a writer if you weren't really good at it? If you could be anything else, why would you be a writer?

I used to rent a house in Princeton, New Jersey, and whenever people came to visit me, I would drive them past Albert Einstein's house, which is the most ordinary house in Princeton - a house, let me assure you, that now a salesman wouldn't live in. I'd always say, "That was Albert Einstein's house." And they'd say, "What do you mean? Why would Albert Einstein live in a little house like that?" And I'd always say to people, "Because he didn't care!"