We are all addicts in various stages of degradation where I live on the Upper West Side, some to heroin, some to small dogs, and some to the New York Times. The heroin is cut, the dogs are paranoid, and the Times cheats by skimping on the West Coast ball scores. No matter, each of us goes upon the street solely in pursuit of his own particular curse.

To say that an idea is fashionable is to say, I think, that is has been adulterated to a point where it is hardly an idea at all.

The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost.

The world of shabby gentility is like no other; its sacrifices have less logic, its standards are harsher, its relation to reality is dimmer than comfortable property or plain poverty can understand.

There are things a man must not do even to save a nation.

A political convention is just not a place where you come away with any trace of faith in human nature.

America... an economic system prouder of the distribution of its products than of the products themselves.