“Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”

“There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.”

“Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends.”

“Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?”

“It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.”

“you might as well fall on your face as lean over too far backwards”

“Taking a single letter from the alphaber," he said, "should make life simpler.""I don't see why. Take the F from life and you have lie. It's adding a letter to simple that makes it simpler. Taking a letter from hoarder makes it harder.”