Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

You," Said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want -- and what I want now is a drink.

We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.

It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.

Why is it that traveling Americans are always so dreadful?

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

If there is anything worse than the aching tedium of staring out of car windows, it is the irritation of getting tickets, packing, finding trains, lying in bouncing berths, washing without water, digging out passports, and fighting through customs. To live in Carlsbad is seemly and to loaf at San Remo healing to the soul, but to get from Carlsbad to San Remo is of the devil.