I think books should have secrets, like people do.

Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.

There is no doubt that I have lots of words inside me; but at moments, like rush-hour traffic at the mouth of a tunnel, they jam.

To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.

It's a man's world, they say; but in its daily textures it is a world created by and for women.

It's been the same story ever since I can remember, ever since Wilson - the Republicans don't do a thing for the little man.

An old essay by John Updike begins, 'We live in an era of gratuitous inventions and negative improvements.' That language is general and abstract, near the top of the ladder. It provokes our thinking, but what concrete evidence leads Updike to his conclusion ? The answer is in his second sentence : 'Consider the beer can.' To be even more specific, Updike was complaining that the invention of the pop-top ruined the aesthetic experience of drinking beer. 'Pop-top' and 'beer' are at the bottom of the ladder, 'aesthetic experience' at the top.