He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.

"You don't believe in God," I said to Stein. "God is a word banging around in the human nervous system. He exists about as much as Santa Claus." "Santa Claus has had a tremendous influence, exist or not." "For children." "Lots of saints have died for God with a courage that's hardly childish." "That's part of the horror. It's all a fantasy. It's all for nothing."

The satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive and eventually releases him again for another chance.

Look at it this way: Psychoanalysis is a permanent fad.

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.

I love being a writer. What I can't stand is the paperwork.

Marriage has driven more than one man to sex.