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

While reading writers of great formulatory power — Henry James, Santayana, Proust — I find I can scarcely get through a page without having to stop to record some lapidary sentence. Reading Henry James, for example, I have muttered to myself, "C’mon, Henry, turn down the brilliance a notch, so I can get some reading done." I may be one of a very small number of people who have developed writer’s cramp while reading.

That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.

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.

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.

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.