There are certain truths so true that they are practically unbelievable.

Between Malraux, Balzac, and Montaigne, I choose Montaigne. Montaigne will survive all the others, because the essay, meaning direct communication between the writer and his reader, will outlast the novel, by at least a thousand years.

I suspect that our own faith in psychiatry will seem as touchingly quaint to the future as our grandparents' belief in phrenology seems now to us.

Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.

There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic.

For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.

You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.