A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.

One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.

My wife who is non-Jewish regrets it all the time that I can say these terrible things about fellow Jews and she can't.

We do choose how we shall live

In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins.

I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy—once you have these in place, you are set to go.

While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.