Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It's safe to assume that by 2085 guns will be sold in vending machines but you won't be able to smoke anywhere in America.
At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.
Also, I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts, but the truth is I really like doing them myself.
It's hard to love a place that's outlawed smoking but finds it perfectly acceptable to serve raw fish in a bath of chocolate.
I find it ridiculous to assign a gender to an inanimate object incapable of disrobing and making an occasional fool of itself.
This was the consequence of seeing too much and understanding the horrible truth: No one is safe. The world is not manageable.
Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite.
What I really hated, of course, was my mind. There must have been an off switch somewhere, but I was damned if I could find it.
I'd always thought that I understood this, but lately I realize that what I call "understanding" is basically just fantasizing.
whenever I read a passage that moves me, I transcribe it in my diary, hoping my fingers might learn what excellence feels like.
Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.
They're hungry for something they know nothing about, but we, we know all too well that the price of fame is the loss of privacy.
I've never made up events, but I've always been a big exaggerator. It's written on my humorist license that I'm allowed to do that.
The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.
I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.
I hate you' she said to me one afternoon. 'I really, really hate you.' Call me sensitive, but I couldn't help but take it personally.
I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.
Perhaps the little Negro girl was holding a concealed razor blade. Maybe she was one of the troublemakers out for a fresh white scalp.
I've always had a way with the little people, making it a point to humor them without looking down my nose at their wasted empty lives.
The fake slap invariably makes contact, adding the elements of shock and betrayal to what had previously been plain old-fashioned fear.
When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.
Most people would have found it grotesque, but when you're in love nothing is so abstract or horrible that it can't be thought of as cute.
They were Jesuits," she told me. "That means they believe in God but not in terlet paper. You should have seen their underwear. Disgusting.
If I'm stuck, I get up from my chair and I wash windows. Or... clean the bathroom. Or vacuum the attic. There's always something to be done.
I love things made out of animals. It's just so funny to think of someone saying, 'I need a letter opener. I guess I'll have to kill a deer.
Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
You know, when you need drugs and you don't have a lot of money, what you'll do is you'll hang out with people who will give you drugs. Right?
It hardly seemed fair, because, unlike a horse or a Seeing Eye dog, the whole glory of being a bird is that nobody would ever put you to work.
Sometimes people say, do you want a drink? And I say, oh, I'd like to, but I'm a tragic alcoholic. I always say tragic. I'm a tragic alcoholic.
I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.
I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.'
If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.
I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
Right, I breast feed baby camels in my backyard just for the freaking fun of it. Just tell me where you live, Pinocchio, and save the baloney for lunch.
I had to wrestle daily with both my inadequacy and my uncontrollable jealousy. I didn't want to kill her, but hoped someone else might do the job for me.
People ask me, 'Have you ever considered doing stand-up?' To me it would be less offensive if someone asked me, 'Have you ever considered dental implants?'
Standing in a two-hour line makes people worry that they're not living in a democratic nation. People stand in line for two houres and they go over the edge.
Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.
College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking.
I just think that the people who say: 'That's not true' when someone tells a story at dinner are the people who didn't get any laughs when they told their story.
In other parts of the country people tried to stay together for the sake of the children. In New York they tried to work things out for the sake of the apartment.
I needed to temper (my dad's) enthusiasm a bit (about attending Princeton), and so I announced that I would be majoring in patricide...My mom was actually jealous.
In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.
My conscience is crosswired with my sweat glands, but there's a short in the system and I break out over things I didn't do, which only makes me look more suspect.
I've never gone on Facebook and am not sure I understand it. The same goes for Twitter. I have someone sending tweets and pretending to be me, but I don't know why.
I can't promise I'll never kill anyone again," he once said, strapping a refrigerator to his back. "It's unrealistic to live your life within such strict parameters
I hoped our lives would continue this way forever, but inevitably the past came knocking. Not the good kind that was collectible but the bad kind that had arthritis.
The combination of ammonia and chloride can be lethal but I've discovered it can work miracles as long as you keep telling yourself, "I want to love, I want to live.
They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity.