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

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

I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said, 'You are what you eat,' but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote.

No one has really ever defined what a friend is.

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

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.

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.