I have no skills with machines. I fear them, and because I cannot help attributing human qualities to them, I suspect that they hate me and will kill me if they can.

These matters require what I think of as the Shakespearean cast of thought. That is to say, a fine credulity about everything, kept in check by a lively skepticism about everything.... It keeps you constantly alert to every possibility.

Women say . . . that if men had to have babies there would soon be no babies in the world. . . . I have sometimes wished that some clever man would actually have a baby in some new labor-saving way; then all men could take it up, and one of the oldest taunts in the world would be stilled forever.

I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.

Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so.

To this day I am indulgent toward orchestras that are trying to lift themselves in the world, while critics are busy assuring them that they are not the Vienna Philharmonic and never will be.

No one needs a word processor if he has an efficient secretary.