One of the pleasures of being a Jew, I don't have to tell you, it allows you anti-Semitism..

I myself think anti-Semitism is about envy..

Generalization, especially risky generalization, is one of the chief methods by which knowledge proceeds... Safe generalizations are usually rather b….

No one has really ever defined what a friend is..

We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents, or the country of our birth. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the t….

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 abi….

The best joke-tellers are those who have the patience to wait for conversation to come around to the point where the jokes in their repertoire have a….

No nostalgia runs deeper than that for something one has never known and now cannot obtain..

That wine drinking is more effete than beer drinking? No question..

We use books like mirrors, gazing into them only to discover ourselves..

What, really, is wanted from a neighborhood? Convenience, certainly, an absence of major aggravation, to be sure. But perhaps mostof all, ideally, wh….

We do not choose to be born.We do not--most of us, choose to die, or the times or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessnes….

In recompense, envy may be the subtlest - perhaps I should say the most insidious - of the seven deadly sins..

I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of….

I just know so many people who have six or seven foreign languages and have read everything and have musical training and they are still dorks.

For me writing is foremost a mode of thinking and when it works well, an act of discovery.

A cat is the only domestic animal I know who toilet trains itself and does a damned impressive job of it..

What distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, and what we do to make them come about..

Culture means, I think, that you have widened your experience enough through reading and through being a little bit thoughtful about these things tha….

Not to like ice cream is to show oneself uninterested in food..

Political correctness and so many of the political fashions of the day...could only be perpetrated in adolescent minds: minds, that is, that are trai….