I never wanted to have any extra money, if it meant having to have any extra work.

The other day I read that last year 58 million tourists came to New York ... where a puny eight million people are trying to live. Unless they own a hotel chain, I don't think a single one of these eight million people are happy about this.

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 never would start writing before midnight and I would finish at, like, seven in the morning.

I don't like the kind of country living where you have to help. I like country living where there is help.

To me the biggest waste of time is commuting. First, there is no place that is less than a two-hour commute from New York. You can be half a mile outside of the city limits; you're two hours away by car. I don't care how close they tell you it is. "Oh, it's only thirty miles." Thirty miles? At 8:30 in the morning, thirty miles outside New York, you might as well be starting out in Omaha.

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