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

High standards generally -- about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else -- far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life.

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.

Within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.

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.

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

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.