The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.

America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves.

I've got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it.

I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody. They may be teaching that still. Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’ I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.

It's a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life.

I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.

Until you die .. it's all life.