The library, I believe, is the last of our public institutions to which you can go without credentials. You don't even need the sticker on your windshield that you need to get into the public beach. All you need is the willingness to read.

I remember how often some of us walked out of the darkness of the Lower East Side and into the brilliant sunlight of Washington Square.

Sex in a woman's world has the same currency a penny has in a man's. Every penny saved is a penny earned in one world and in the next every sexual adventure is a literary experience.

Books do not make life easier or more simple, but harder and more interesting.

The conservatives nearly always tolerate the demagogue while he is destroying liberals.

The arrogance of the young is a direct result of not having known enough consequences. The turkey that every day greedily approaches the farmer who tosses him grain is not wrong. It is just that no one ever told him about Thanksgiving.

No man does right by a woman at a party.