Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn't have the slightest idea what's really going on.

It's the writer's job to stage confrontations, so the characters will say surprising and revealing things, and educate and entertain us all.

My ancestors were all Freethinkers, formerly Catholics. It was science and Darwin, in particular, that made them decide, as educated people, which they were, that the priest, nice as he was, didn't know what he was talking about.

Puny man can do nothing at all to help or please God Almighty, and Luck is not the hand of God.

I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble.

The master of ceremonies asked people to say what they thought the function of the novel might be in modern society, and one critic said, “To provide touches of color in rooms with all-white walls.” Another one said, “To describe blow-jobs artistically.

A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.