Tragedy massages the human ego even as comedy deflates it. ... Tragedy pits us against large foes and the trip wire is our own character. ... In comedy we fall afoul of one another. Comedy depends on social life, on our behavior in groups. In tragedy you can observe one human against the gods. In comedy it's one human versus other humans and often one man (or woman if I'm writing it) against her own worst impulses.

There hasn't been a day in my life since I started Latin in ninth grade that I haven't benefited by the lives of the ancients.

Women need to feel loved and men need to feel needed.

The last thing I have to say is that ice is the past tense of water. I've always wanted to write that sentence and now I have.

People aren't grapes - you can't weigh them in a bunch, but I guess it's easier than dealing with people as individuals.

I'm beginning to feel that the real endangered species on planet earth are not the whales and the elephants but those of us who can laugh at the world and ourselves. ... I fear the dry turn of the American mind, this focus on the literal, as much as I fear our capacity for self-destruction. We've become hagridden by facts, obsessed with product instead of process. Where's the energetic wit, the looney outlook, the frivolity, the lightness of comforting laughter? It has become fashionable to know and unfashionable to feel, and you can't really laugh if you can't feel.

I mean, what do people talk about when they're married?" "Their kids, I guess." "Maybe that's all they have in common.