What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.

If Jesus was alive today, we would kill him with lethal injection. I call that progress. We would have to kill him for the same reason he was killed the first time. His ideas are just too liberal.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?