Reading a novel, War and Peace for example, is no Catnap. Because a novel is so long, reading one is like being married forever to somebody nobody knows or cares about.

If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.

I can see where influential people would like Maharishi better than Jesus. My God, if the Beatles and Mia Farrow went to Jesus, He'd tell them to give all their money away.

This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.

It's incumbent on the President to entertain. Clinton did a better job of it - and was forgiven for the scandals, incidentally. Bush is entertaining us with what I call the Republican Super Bowl, which is played by the lower classes using live ammunition.

Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.

Educating a beautiful woman is like pouring honey into a fine Swiss watch: everything stops.