who hasn't slept in an empty bed sometimes, longing for the embrace of another person on the achingly short trip to the grave?

"Exercise" is such a dirty word in my household that whenever I even think of it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate.

New York City is like the appetizer table at a Jewish wedding, loaded with salt and spice and cholesterol and flavor, with a waiter holding out pleasure in his right hand and indigestion in his left. If you've got the bucks, this burg has the bangs.

To find his own salvation, a man must first find the fool locked inside himself and set it free.

Catch a dog in your favorite chair, and he slinks away abashed. The cat will pretend incomprehension; surely you must know it's her chair?

If you are reading a large newspaper, all spread out on the table, your cat will come and sit on the very paragraph you are reading, the talented cat draping her tail with miraculous precision over the very line you're not finished with.

A cat is a purring parcel of paradox, a cunning collection of contradictions. A cat is lazy and busy, dainty and savage, affectionate and aloof, greedy and finicky, sound asleep in one instant, and awake and stalking in the next. A cat is a limp puddle of softness, surrounding a steel-hard and ever-alert set of muscles. ... A cat has the face of a pansy flower, and is just as velvety. A cat holds infinity in her eyes, and your heart in her front paws.