Words fashioned with somewhat over precise diction are like shapes turned out by a cookie cutter.

... it is a fact universally acknowledged that a husband is the most ridiculous thing on earth, except for a bachelor.

I can still hear my mother wailing over some new kitchen crisis, "Oh God," and my father answering cozily from the silo, "Were you calling me, dear?

All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.

Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.

"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."

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