“Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I'm telling you.”

“After Olestra (may cause anal leakage), people are a tad suspicious about products that do things that are too good to be true in the natural world.I tell this to the account people, and they say, "But it comes from trees!"To which I reply, "Yes and so does napalm and rubber cement. But that doesn't mean I'm going to spread them on my English muffin.”

“Should I just sit down, right here at carousel seven, and shake until somebody's arms are around me and they're saying, 'It's okay, I'm here, I'm here, come with me to the institute.”

“Are you one of those people who says on a first date, 'I'm really not in a hurry to meet somebody, I figure if it happens, it happens'? Because those are the most desperate people of all. I'm just saying this so that if you are this person, you aren't hiding it from anybody.There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.”

“Then he explains Chinese food in Manhattan to me: 'See the way it works is, there's one central location out on Long Island where all this stuff is made. Then it's piped into the city through a series of underground pipes that run parallel to the train and subway tracks. The restaurants then just pull a lever. One lever for General Tso's chicken, another for beef with broccoli sauce. It's like beer; it's on tap.' It's amazing how convincing he is when he says this. There's no pause in his description, nowhere for him to stop and think, to make this up as he goes along. It's as though he's simply repeating something he read in the Times yesterday. This makes me love him more than I did just five minutes ago.”

“As far as I'm concerned, baldness is the male breast cancer, only much worse because almost everyone gets it. True, it's not life-threatening. Just social-life threatening. But in New York City, there is no difference.”

“A body in motion tends to stay in motion. (reebok,chiat/day.)Just do it. (Nike, Weiden and Kennedy.)Dammit something just isn't right. (Me, to my bathroom mirror at four thirty in the morning when I'm plastered.)”