What the tongue has promised, the body must submit to.

In a world that operates largely at random, coincidences are to be expected, but any one of them must always be mistrusted.

A character who is thought-out is not born, he or she is contrived. A born character is round, a thought-out character is flat.

There is only one object on earth that frightens me: a physicist working on a new trick.

There are two kinds of statistics, the kind you look up and the kind you make up.

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef’s ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water.

Everything in a story should be credible.