“Our department takes 1,120 calls every day. Do you know how many of the calls the public expects perfection on? 1,120. Nobody calls the fire department and says, 'Send me two dumb-ass firemen in a pickup truck.' In three minutes they want five brain-surgeon decathlon champions to come and solve all their problems.”

“Well, all I hope," said Miss Cornelia calmly, "is that when I'm dead nobody will call me 'our departed sister.”

“If you need to find out the kindling point of paper (451° F), don’t call an academic, call the fire department.”

“Privatizing our public schools makes as much sense as privatizing the fire department or or the police department”

“I'm on the New York State Council for the Arts now, and every so often some other member talks about sending notices to college English departments about some literary opportunity, and I say, "Send them to the chemistry departments, send them to the zoology departments, send them to the anthropology departments and the astronomy departments and physics departments, and all the medical and law schools. That's where the writers are most likely to be.”

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”