I answered my father's demands for sympathy with silence.

Mortality: not acquittal but a series of postponements is what we hope for.

Beauty is lyrical. Ugliness is elegiac.

I alternate between reading cook books and reading diet books.

In middle age, I practiced feeling old, but the real thing has been a rude surprise.

The nature of language may determine what most people say, but I always speak my own meaning.

Contempt for others, like masturbation, is best as a secret pleasure.