Words, isolated in the velvet of radio, took on a jeweled particularity. Television has quite the opposite effect: words are drowned in the visual soup in which they are obliged to be served.

One can watch hours and hours of TV without actually losing interest, but, as with Chinese food, one is rarely left with much residue of nourishment.

We thought philosophy ought to be patient and unravel people's mental blocks. Trouble with doing that is, once you've unravelled them, their heads fall off.

At last, after innumerable glamorous and frightful years, mankind approaches a war which is totally predictable from beginning to end.

During the years when the barely educated immigrants were being replaced by barely educated native sons, Hollywood . . . proved a more reliable, cost-effective means of securing world domination than any nuclear arsenal or diplomatic démarche.

Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled.

Talk isn't work. Work is when you have pages in the evening that you didn't have in the morning.