I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go? I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.

You're lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

That's something that annoys the hell out of me-I mean if somebody says the coffee's all ready and it isn't.

I love to write and I assure you I write regularly... But I write for myself, for my own pleasure. And I want to be left alone to do it.

Her joke of a name aside, her general unprettiness aside, she was, in terms of permanently memorable, immoderately perceptive, small-area faces, a stunning and final girl.

She's quite intelligent, in my stupidity.

Each of his phrases was rather like a little ancient island, inundated by a miniature sea of whiskey.