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.

I am not merely a habitual quoter but an incorrigible one. I am, I may as well face it, more quotatious than an old stock-market ticker-tape machine, except that you can't unplug me.

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

I am basically a complainer and all the grounds for complaint have been swept out from under me.

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

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.

I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.