In a country this large and a language even larger ... there ought to be a living for somebody who cares and wants to entertain and instruct a reader.

The great thing about the dead, they make space.

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do - they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

I think it's the sentence-to-sentence pleasures, the little surprises of a surprising style of an acute style, and also the way things happen one after the other, that makes a book interesting to read page to page

It's great to have an enemy. Sharpens your senses.

Try to develop actual work habits, and even though you have a busy life, try to reserve an hour, say - or more - a day to write. Some very good things have been written on an hour a day.

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.