At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self. Some come to realize this after they are in the nursing home.

The only thing in the world worth a damn is the strange, touching, pathetic, awesome nobility of the individual human spirit.

Night and gin and music-the right setting for peeling off the thin clinging layers of bullshit and finding one's way down closer to the essential self.

Now it stands to reason, mister, any damn fool stares into the sun long enough, he'll end up seeing exactly what some other damn fool tells him he's going to see.

A nonreader is somebody standing there in a blindfold.

Friendships, like marriages, are dependent on avoiding the unforgivable.

I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.