Face it: a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.

A man can't eat anger for breakfast and sleep with it at night and not suffer damage to his soul.

Bad things don't happen to writers; it's all material.

Nothing that readers say or do strikes me as a nuisance. Anyone who cracks open a book of mine is, to me, a gem.

The reason to retire is to try to avoid embarrassment; you ought to do it before people are dropping big hints. You want to be the first to come up with the idea. You don't want to wait until you trip and fall off the stage.

Love has the power to rescue us and not let go, otherwise it isn't love

It is more worthy in the eyes of God . . . if a writer makes three pages sharp and funny about the lives of geese than to make three hundred fat and flabby about God or the American people.