When I used to teach creative writing, I would tell the students to make their characters want something right away.

My own feeling is that if adultery is wickedness then so is food. Both make me feel so much better afterward.

Maybe they invited me because they know I have a tuxedo

Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.

Social class means a hell of a lot and upper class people - no matter how well [Franklin ] Roosevelt did - it was stylish to hate him.

I hate it that Americans are taught to fear some books and some ideas as though they were diseases.

Big, undreamed-of things — the people on the edge see them first.