Someone — Cyril Connolly? Ezra Pound? — once said that anything that can be read twice is literature; I would say that anything that bears saying twice is quotable.

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.

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

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.

I am married to someone I love.

I have myself always been terrified of plagiarism - of being accused of it, that is. Every writer is a thief, though some of us are more clever than others at disguising our robberies. The reason writers are such slow readers is that we are ceaselessly searching for things we can steal and then pass off as our own: a natty bit of syntax, a seamless transition, a metaphor that jumps to its target like an arrow shot from an aluminum crossbow.

I know from the middle distance I give off the look of being prolific, which is a funny compliment to receive.