A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it.
The problem for me is that reading is, I won’t say a sacred, but nevertheless a pretty serious act.
I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy.
I am basically a complainer and all the grounds for complaint have been swept out from under me.
I should prefer to die laughing, and, on more than one occasion, thought I might.
That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question.
No one has really ever defined what a friend is.
I am the heterosexual Truman Capote.
One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don’t have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism.
By the way, the secret of speaking French is confidence. Whether you are right or wrong, you don’t hesitate.
High standards generally – about workmanship and creation of objects, about what is owed in friendship, about the quality of art and much else – far from being snobbish, are required to maintain decency in life.
The reason ‘closure’ is a cliche is that it is used too often, too imprecisely, and doesn’t in any case reflect reality. In reality, such closure in broken friendships and much else in life is rarely achieved; only death brings closure and then not always for those still living.
The pleasure of jogging and running is rather like that of wearing a fur coat in Texas in August: the true joy comes in being able to take the damn thing off.
We use books like mirrors, gazing into them only to discover ourselves.
I believe it was Gayelord Hauser, the nutritionist, who said, ‘You are what you eat,’ but if you happen to be an intellectual, you are what you quote.
Courage is nine-tenths context. What is courageous in one setting can be foolhardy in another and even cowardly in a third.
One serious drawback about letters is that, in order to get them, one must send some out. When it comes to the mail, I feel it is better to receive than to give.
What all great teachers appear to have in common is love of their subject, an obvious satisfaction in rousing this love in their students, and an ability to convince them that what they are being taught is deadly serious.
Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things that it has changed your outlook in some ways. And not necessarily made you a better human being but made you see things.
In recompense, envy may be the subtlest – perhaps I should say the most insidious – of the seven deadly sins.