Quote collection
389 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"They know you can't get people to stop smoking, so they develop a system of informants. That's the whole idea of second-hand smoke, you know. Make second-hand smoke dangerous and turn everybody against smokers. Then they say you can't even smoke in a bar - a bar! - because bartenders have a right to a smoke-free "workspace." Ah, bartenders, those health nuts."
"I am alternately very gregarious - very sociable - and then very solitary."
"While it is undeniably true that people love a surprise, it is equally true that they are seldom pleased to suddenly and without warning happen upon a series of prunes in what they took to be a normal loin of pork."
"The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture."
"Raisins are a thing that lasts, they come in small boxes, and you always feel like eating raisins, even at six in the morning. A raisin is always an appropriate snack."
"remember this: no matter how politely or distinctly you ask a Parisian a question he will persist in answering you in French."
"Take away a man's actual sense of manhood - which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children - and you've got to give them something else. And they did."
"It's very disheartening to encounter a fearful twenty-one year old. They haven't earned the right to be that afraid. It's not like we're living in war-torn Bosnia or something."
"Scientists are rarely to be counted among the fun people. Awkward at parties, shy with strangers, deficient in irony - they have had no choice but to turn their attention to the close study of everyday objects."
"there are two kinds of music - good music and bad music. Good music is music that I want to hear. Bad music is music that I don't want to hear."
"By the time everyone catches up with you, you're bored."
"for someone such as myself, who is kind of feckless and immature, it's better to have rich friends than to be rich yourself, because then you have wealth without the responsibility. You get to go to their houses, and you get acquainted with a level of furniture that you cannot provide for yourself. Furniture, I think is the most important attribute of rich people."
"Being poor is like being a child. Being rich is like being an adult: you get to do whatever you want. Everyone is nice when they have to be; rich people are nice when they feel like it."
"I don't like to read nonfiction. To me, fact is something I can look up."
"I woke up at five o'clock in the morning with the whole first paragraph in my head. Now, this just shows what a slothful person I am: I tried to go back to sleep."
"There are certain relationships I think I'm great at: I'm the world's greatest daughter. I'm a great relative. I believe I'm a great friend."
"Life was certainly more entertaining when people were indulging their vices as opposed to going to meetings to indulge in a new vice: discussing their innermost thoughts in public."
"Things that people will say to me, mostly, is that you shouldn't have all these books. It's too expensive."
"Nothing succeeds like address."
"Whenever I am doing anything else, which is most of the time, even if it is not something like robbing a bank, I feel felonious. Writing is what I'm supposed to be doing."