I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.

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.

Celibacy is the worst form of self-abuse.

The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

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

The tuba is certainly the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.

"You ought to be ashamed," a woman in an Easter bonnet told Stein. "Your race gave us our religion..." "From ancient polytheism, the belief in lots of gods," the woman continued a little more eruditely, "the Hebrew nation led us on to the idea that there is only one." "Which is just a step from the truth," said Stein.