In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

Every day and in every way, baseball gets fancier. A few more years and they'll be playing on oriental rugs.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.

After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.

The charm of television entertainment is its ability to bridge the chasm between dinner and bedtime without mental distraction.

The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.