I am afraid I am one of those people who continues to read in the hope of sometime discovering in a book a single—and singular—piece of wisdom so penetrating, so soul stirring, so utterly applicable to my own life as to make all the bad books I have read seem well worth the countless hours spent on them. My guess is that this wisdom, if it ever arrives, will do so in the form of a generalization.

Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks

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.

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

Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.

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