“This is not my favorite way to wake up. My favorite way to wake up is to have a certain French movie star whisper to me softly at two thirty in the afternoon that if I want to get to Sweden in time to pick up my Nobel Prize for Literature I had better ring for breakfast. This occurs rather less often than one might wish.”

“My favorite animal is steak.”

“I never took hallucinogenic drugs because I never wanted my consciousness expanded one unnecessary iota.”

“To me, nothing can be more important than giving children books, It's better to be giving books to children than drug treatment to them when they're 15 years old. Did it ever occur to anyone that if you put nice libraries in public schools you wouldn't have to put them in prisons?”

“I believe in talking behind peoples' backs. That way, they hear it more than once.”

“No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation.”

“I write so slowly, I could write with my own blood and not hurt myself.”