One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame, we have killed off so much real shame as well.

Old age is an excellent time for outrage. My goal is to say or do at least one outrageous thing every week.

Temperament, like liberty, is important despite how many crimes are committed in its name.

The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to Advertising copy.

Individualism is rather like innocence: There must be something unconscious about it.

It is one of the sublime provincialities of New York that its inhabitants lap up trivial gossip about essential nobodies they've never set eyes on, while continuing to boast that they could live somewhere for twenty years without so much as exchanging pleasantries with their neighbors across the hall.

The thrust of ambition is, and always has been, great, but among the bright-eyed it had once a more adventurous and individualistic air, a much more bracing rivalry.