“I’ve found newspapers only useful as kindling material for campfires. It’s been said that newspaper articles are written at a fifth grade reading level. If so, I can’t figure out why journalists would write something that the average high school senior can’t even read.”

“Writing is the art of remembering and forgetting. You must forget what you’ve already written, because if you’re dwelling on your old material you can’t write new material, and you must remember all you’ve written and read, so you are not duplicating already existing writing.”

“When I can’t write I read. When I can’t read I sleep. And when I can’t sleep I write.”

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

“For I aint, you must know,' said Betty, 'much of a hand at reading writing-hand, though I can read my Bible and most print. And I do love a newspaper. You mightn't think it, but Sloppy is a beautiful reader of a newspaper. He do the Police in different voices.”

“The dead center of existence: when it is all the same to you whether you read a newspaper article or think about God.”