I learned very early in life that I was always going to need people more than they needed me

In Manhattan, every flat surface is a potential stage and every inattentive waiter an unemployed, possibly unemployable, actor.

It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way.

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe?'

Though intelligence is powerless to modify character, it is a dab hand at finding euphemisms for its weaknesses.

In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.

The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.