“Enjoy life while you can. Nothing's gonna happen for maybe five, ten, fifteen, twenty years. But lemme give you a piece of advice: Whenever the doorbell rings, have somebody else answer the door.”

“And evolution or God or whatever arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of anything and so on.”

“A book is an arrangement of twenty-six phonetic symbols, ten numerals, and about eight punctuation marks, and people can cast their eyes over these and envision the eruption of Mount Vesuvius or the Battle of Waterloo.”

“My God-- life! Who can understand even one little minute of it?''Don't try,' he said. 'Just pretend you understand.''That's-- that's very good advice.' I went limp.”

“That's the secret of how to enjoy writing and how to make yourself meet high standards," said Mrs. Berman. "You don't write for the whole world, and you don't write for ten people, or two. You write for just one person.”

“People who sell bolts and nuts and locomotives and frozen orange juice make billions, while the people who struggle to bring a little beauty into the world, give life a little meaning, they starve.--"$10,000 A Year, Easy”

“Quoth the doorbell with its silence, no comment at this time.”