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"In New York I'd go to the movies three or four times a week. Here I've upped it to six or seven, mainly because I'm too lazy to do anything else. Fortunately, going to the movies seems to suddenly qualify as an intellectual accomplishment, on a par with reading a book or devoting time to serious thought. It's not that the movies have gotten any more strenuous, it's just that a lot of people are as lazy as I am, and together we've agreed to lower the bar."
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"A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the others. Has everybody a different opinion? Then it is a literary milieu."
Author Name
Personal Development
"So, while we're sitting here on this luxury yacht enjoying our bread and water, why doesn't someone tell me the plan?"
Author Name
Personal Development
"If only for the sake of elegance, I try to remain morally pure."
Author Name
Personal Development
"After all, that's all a man really needs: a big city full of sin and sleaze, and a chance."
Author Name
Personal Development
"I don't envy "busy." Busy means having a schedule, not living life. What I really covet is leisure and peace of mind. Those who have both, have it all."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Getting through life without a lot of money, possessions, and/or friends is admirable, especially if it is by choice."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Some days you live in pajamas, and your hair kind-of has that Albert Einstein look."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Luckily, I always travel with a book, just in case I have to wait on line for Santa, or some such inconvenience."
Author Name
Personal Development
"There is no such thing as a good call at 7 AM. It's been my experience that all calls between the hours of 11 PM and 9 AM are disaster calls."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore."
Author Name
Personal Development
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"It's astonishing the amount of time that certain straight people devote to gay sex - trying to determine what goes where and how often. They can't imagine any system outside their own, and seem obsessed with the idea of roles, both in bed and out of it. Who calls whom a bitch? Who cries harder when the cat dies? Which one spends the most time in the bathroom? I guess they think that it's that cut-and-dried, though of course it's not. Hugh might do the cooking, and actually wear an apron while he's at it, but he also chops the firewood, repairs the hot-water heater, and could tear off my arm with no more effort than it takes to uproot a dandelion."
Sexuality
"I'm the most important person in the lives of almost everyone I know and a good number of the people I've never even met."
Responsibility
"Every gathering has its moment. As an adult, I distract myself by trying to identify it, dreading the inevitable downswing that is sure to follow. The guests will repeat themselves one too many times, or you'll run out of dope or liquor and realize that it was all you ever had in common."
Cynicism
"I haven't got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out."
Change
"They were nothing like the French people I had imagined. If anything, they were too kind, too generous and too knowledgable in the fields of plumbing and electricity."
People
"After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations."
Art
"It bothered me that the bag bothered me more than head did, but what are you going to do? A person doesn't conciously choose what he focuses on. Those things choose you, and, once they do, nothing, it seems, can shake them."
Psychology
"When forced to leave my house for an extended period of time, I take my typewriter with me, and together we endure the wretchedness of passing through the X-ray scanner. The laptops roll merrily down the belt, while I'm instructed to stand aside and open my bag. To me it seems like a normal enough thing to be carrying, but the typewriter's declining popularity arouses suspicion and I wind up eliciting the sort of reaction one might expect when traveling with a cannon.It's a typewriter,' I say. 'You use it to write angry letters to airport security."
Individuality
"But instead I am applying for a job as an elf. Even worse than applying is the very real possibility that I will not be hired, that I couldn't even find work as an elf. That's when you know you're a failure."
Failure
"The way I saw it, if my students were willing to pretend I was a teacher, the least I could do was return the favor and pretend that they were writers."
Teaching
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