“At least forty million Americans can't read and write, according to this morning's New York Times. That is six times as many illiterates as there are people of Armenian descent anywhere! So many of them and so few of us!”

“I must be honest. I can only read so many paragraphs of a New York Times story before I puke.”

“In 1979 the New York Times reported that in many {New York Subway} stations, the signs are so confusing that one is tempted to wish they were not there at all - a wish that is, in fact, granted in numerous stations and on all too many of the subway cars themselves.”

“It wasn't an attack. We'd been together too many times before, made love together too many times before, for it to be that. It was just that fear had suddenly entered, and made us dangerous strangers.("New York Blues")”

“So many people say they want a new life, but then they take the new one they get every morning for granted. Don’t do this.”

“Some readers read a book as if it were an instruction manual, expecting to understand everything first time, but of course when you write, you put into every sentence an overflow of meaning, and you create in every sentence as many resonances and double meanings and ambiguities as you can possibly pack in there, so that people can read it again and get something new each time.”