A lovely thing about Christmas is that it's compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

Humor, a good sense of it, is to Americans what manhood is to Spaniards, and we will go to great lengths to prove it. Experiments with laboratory rats have shown that, if one psychologist in the room laughs at something a rat does, all of the other psychologists will laugh equally. Nobody wants to be left holding the joke.

Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter.

Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.

I was brought up imagining that cream rises to the top, merit wins out, the race is to the swift and riches to men of understanding, but it ain't necessarily so. The swift stand a better chance if they are also beautiful.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do, and in those times, you must do something anyway.

I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it.