Obviously I'm in favor of protecting the rights of everybody: gay, black, women, what have you, American Indians.

Most writers are middle-class and are the children of doctors or lawyers.

At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care — if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.

Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

There are two things you never turn down: sex and appearing on television.