“As the poet said, 'Only God can make a tree' -- probably because it's so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.”

“Because it's much more pleasant to be obsessed over how the hero gets out of his predicament than it is over how I get out of mine.”

“You know how you're always trying to get things to come out perfect in art because it's real difficult in life”

“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.”

“If it turns out that there is a God...the worst that you can say about him is that basically he's an underachiever.”

“God, you Jews are truly exotic."Exotic? She should only know the Greenblatts. Or Mr. and Mrs. Milton Sharpstein, my father's friends. Or for that matter, my cousin Tovah. Exotic? I mean, they're nice, but hardly exotic with their endless bickering over the best way to combat indigestion or how far back to sit from the television set.”

“If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit in my name at a Swiss Bank.”