The test of interesting people is that subject matter doesn't matter.

It is disgusting to pick your teeth; what is vulgar is to use a gold toothpick.

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.

He was the mightiest of Puritans no less than of philistines who first insisted that beauty is only skin deep.

The trouble with our age is that it is all signpost and no destination.

We are neurotically haunted today by the imminence, and by the ignominy, of failure. We know at how frightening a cost one succeeds: to fail is something too awful to think about.

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.