The best joke-tellers are those who have the patience to wait for conversation to come around to the point where the jokes in their repertoire have application.

What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, what is wanted is a comfortable background, a breathing space of intermission between the intensities of private life and the calculations of public life.

Not to like ice cream is to show oneself uninterested in food.

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery

What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about.

Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather boring. Delete that "usually rather." Safe generalizations are quite boring.

Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.