We learned some bad things, and the Vietnam War led to some bad conclusions. We're not the greatest generation, that's for sure.

Find someone hypersocial and crazy and try not to follow them to their doom, but to make friends with their nicer friends.

I'm for people clinging. I'm pro-clinging.

There's a big difference between having relatives who have money and actually having it yourself. Just because you have a cousin who has a lot of money doesn't mean he shares it with you. Or that you'd ask him for a loan.

I think it's really good and helpful to have the people you most admire in some other discipline than what you work in. It's too intimidating and derivative to be just totally gobsmacked by someone doing exactly the same thing as you are.

Mary McCarthy and that Mr. Intellectual kind of guy ... Dwight McDonald? And they were really mean about [Jerome David] Salinger, and oh they were going to destroy him, and just look how thoroughly they destroyed him! No one reads Salinger anymore!

There's some people who are just very dynamic about social life, and it can be some pretty crazy stuff, but you end up meeting people you like.