Writing is hard. I learned how to work hard from wrestling, not English courses.

A woman half dressed seemed to have some power, but a man was simply not as handsome as when he was naked, and not as secure as when he was clothed.

But I often think that so-called glamorous people are just very busy people.

He was too young to know that, in any novel with a reasonable amount of forethought, there were no coincidences.

What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.

You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We - Americans - permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it.

Grant us safe lodging, and holy rest,” Mrs. Grogan was saying, “and peace at last.” Amen, thought Wilbur Larch, the Saint of St. Cloud’s, who was seventy-something, and an ether addict, and who felt that he’d come a long way and still had a long way to go.