What begins with comedy ends with comedy... in my short view of the matter.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.

I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diners Club.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place