When I fly, I’m never afraid the plane is going to crash. But there have often been times when I was afraid it wouldn’t crash. I was just afraid it was going to circle O’Hare for the rest of my life.
I hate all jobs. I’ve never had a job I liked.
People who are well-known, famous people, I think, make very poor characters for fiction. They make good characters for gossip columns. But not for fiction.
Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke.
There are two modes of transport in Los Angeles: car and ambulance. Visitors who wish to remain inconspicuous are advised to choose the latter.
Do not elicit your child’s political opinions. He doesn’t know any more than you do.
I don’t care if New York avoided bankruptcy by substituting tourism for the garment business.
Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn’t have to put them in prisons?
Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come.
I never would start writing before midnight and I would finish at, like, seven in the morning.
Children do not really need money. After all, they don’t have to pay rent or send mailgrams.
I have friends, some of whom are spectacularly good writers, who really want someone to edit them. I don’t register that impulse. It’s like the impulse for wanting a dog.
I’m very lazy, I hate to work.
Children are rarely in the position to lend one a truly interesting sum of money. There are, however, exceptions, and such children are an excellent addition to any party.
When I was a kid, the people of my generation didn’t want to be writers, they wanted to be rock stars. Rock and roll was not just entertainment, it was the center of people’s lives. When I was young, it was exciting and interesting.
When I was very little, say five or six, I became aware of the fact that people wrote books. Before that, I thought that God wrote books. I thought a book was a manifestation of nature, like a tree.
For the movie review columns, I always knew exactly what I was going to write about – the movies.
When you reach a certain age, suddenly there are lots of people younger than you, which is really startling.
I love being in love. I don’t think anything compares with it, though I consider it very disruptive.
I’ve always been old at heart.