How’s the patient?” asked Derby. “Dead to the world.” “But not actually dead.” “No.” “How nice - to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Son,' my father said to me, 'someday this will all be yours.

Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.

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.

[People] want to feel superior, so they imagine we're Bible thumpers and uneducated and all that.

I said I wasn't interested, and she was bright enough to say that she wasn't really interested either. As things turned out, we both overestimated our apathies, but not that much.

Laughter or crying is what a human being does when there's nothing else he can do.