In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

Skinny women don't enjoy being told they're skinny nowadays. They enjoy telling you how they got that way, as though starvation were an achievement.

Serious journalism need not be solemn.

Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

Schoolteachers seemed determined to persuade me that 'classic' is a synonym for 'narcotic'.

Notice, for example, that people who talk about "the joys of childhood" are always adults. Only an adult, utterly remote from the reality of childhood, could suppose it is time of joys.