I have to work in England, but here in America you don't have to work. You can sort of enter the profession of being.

I don't think you can really be proud of being gay because it isn't something you've done. You can only be proud of not being ashamed.

I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.

I am told that you regret not what you did but what you didn't do; and so that's why I do everything, so as not to have any regrets.

Keeping up with the Joneses was a full-time job with my mother and father. It was not until many years later when I lived alone that I realized how much cheaper it was to drag the Joneses down to my level.

Everybody who's been on television more than once wears in public an expression of fatuous affability. Because you may be addressed at any moment by somebody.