I'll miss it until the day I die, and I'm convinced to this day that I can get on a horse and jump a course of fences satisfactorily. It doesn't leave you.

I would say that writing, both the act of writing, and of course reading of other people's work is, for me, supreme joy.

Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.

The Pivot Questionnaire that I ask other people, when I have on rare occasion answered it, the answer to the question, "What turns you on?" Is words. Not mine, other people's. Words, words, words, that's what turns me on.

I stopped writing at the age of 18. I had written incessantly before that. I read, of course, because I was in university, but I wasn't going to write. I wasn't going to do any of those dangerous things. I was going to be a stolid, bourgeois lawyer.

If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

I was originally going to be a lawyer, and the only thing I remember from the art of cross-examination is - you can see this one coming up Sixth Avenue - never ask a question the answer to which you do not know.