Contrary to what many of you may imagine, a career in letters is not without its drawbacks – chief among them the unpleasant fact that one is frequently called upon to sit down and write.
And I thought, You know, Fran, you could go away and you could be in a very beautiful place with a cook, but then you’d have to be a good guest. I would much rather stay here and be a bad guest. And, believe me, I am being a bad guest.
But alas, I do not rule the world and that, I am afraid, is the story of my life – always a godmother, never a God.
I would not call it a writer’s block. A writer’s block to me is a temporary thing. A month, you know, six weeks. This was more a writer’s blockade. To me, this was very much like the Vietnam War. It was the same timetable, it was on the same schedule as the Vietnam War. I don’t know how I got into it and I couldn’t get out of it.
What, after all, is London to a man who thinks of the whole Middle East as just another bad neighborhood and the coast of South Africa as simply the beach?
In other words, everybody talks about people but nobody ever does anything about them.
Below you will find the complete and unabridged record of the general conversation of the general public since time immemorial: Hi, how are you? I did not. Good. Now you know how I felt. Do you mind if I go ahead of you? I only have this one thing.
War is, undoubtedly, hell, but there is no earthly reason why it has to start so early in the morning.
Pocket calculators encourage children to think that they have all the answers. If this belief were actually to take hold they might well seize power, which would undoubtedly result in all of the furniture being much too small.
Children do not sit next to one in restaurants and discuss their preposterous hopes for the future in loud tones of voice.
People love to feel superior to their past.
It is by this painstaking method of careful examination and eventual rejection that we reach a conclusion: life is something to do when you can’t get to sleep. Therefore, that which we call civilization is merely the accumulated debris of a chilling number of bad nights.
If there was no such thing as food, Oyster Bay would be called just Bay, and for the title of The Cherry Orchard Chekhov would have chosen A Group of Empty Trees, Regularly Spaced.
Try to derive some comfort from the knowledge that if your guidance counselor were working up to his potential, he wouldn’t still be in high school.
Is that what you want to be when you grow up? Helpful? Fine. Wonderful. Go, be helpful.
You want to be a headwaiter? Act like a headwaiter. A little ignoring, please. A little uncalled-for arrogance.
I, personally, have never been able to throw a book away. I have seen books, like in trash, and to me it’s like seeing a human head in the trash. Even if it’s a horrible book.
The second thing that distinguishes you, sets you apart from the crowd, is that everybody in the entire world likes his eggs done a different and special way. When it comes to eggs, everyone has his own subtle preference, his own individual taste. So the next time that someone asks you how you like your eggs, speak right up. After all, you only go around once.
Flight 477 to Minneapolis will depart oh, let’s say, eightish. Flight 477 to Minneapolis will depart around eight, eight-thirty. Flight 477 to Minneapolis will depart while it’s still dark. Flight 477 to Minneapolis will depart before the paperback is out.
I get up feeling curiously unrefreshed.
Every single writer in the city of New York is not writing. Once knowledge of this has spread throughout the entire non-writing writing community, a tremendous feeling of mutual relief and well-being is experienced.