Quote collection
94 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Even today, well-brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth."
"If law school is so hard to get through... how come there are so many lawyers?"
"We all know funny people who can't get it down on the page - even funny writers who can't get it down on the page."
"What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul."
"The ceiling on taxation of capital gains reflects the national belief that speculation is a more worthwhile way to make a living than work."
""Law professors were never like economics professors," a Harvard Law professor told me. "If you disagreed with someone, you didn't call him a fool.""
"There's always a source for humor."
"What interests me is what you might call vernacular writing, writing that connects you to a place."
"If General Haig is so smart, why did he finish 214th (out of 310) in his graduating class at West Point? Does that mean there are 213 generals his age who are smarter than he is?"
"Why in the world are you a Republican?"
"Getting a tattoo would probably make me cry."
"At American weddings, the quality of the food is in inverse proportion to the social position of the bride and groom."
"Sometimes, if I had until the next day to turn the story in, I'd head home, finding that the knot in the narrative came loose with the rhythmic clacking of the subway train."
"If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny."
"Health food makes me sick."
"One advantage of a monarchy is that a monarchy does not suffer the effects of having great clots of white Christians moping around simply because they aren't the king or queen."
"I actually think of being funny as an odd turn of mind, like a mild disability, some weird way of looking at the world that you can't get rid of."
"The average trade book has a shelf life of between milk and yogurt, except for books by any member of the Irving Wallace family - they have preservatives."
"Taking pleasure in the dark side may be some sort of occupational hazard for reporters."
"When you're writing, you are robbed of your delivery."