"There are now electrical appliances with the main unit so sealed in that it cannot be got at for repair. There have always been human beings like that."

"You never realize how tacky your furniture is till you try to give it to the Salvation Army and they won't take it."

"I have seen messed-up people of forty who still seemed salvageable, and children of six or seven who almost surely were not."

"I do not trust those who are above name-dropping. The suppression of small vices always exacts too high a toll."

"Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others. Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang, a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back."

"Good food, good sex, good digestion, good sleep: to these basic animal pleasures, man has added nothing but the good cigarette."

"Most of us would rather risk catastrophe than read the directions."

"Insult, not flattery, is the great aphrodisiac."

"If you must reread old love letters, better pick a room without mirrors."

"There’s an awful lot of blood around that water is thicker than."

"My doctor is nice; every time I see him, I’m ashamed of what I think of doctors in general."

"We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence."

"Mumps, measles, and puppy love are terrible after twenty."

"Young lovers and young nations face the same problem: after orgasm, what?"

"Life's most painful condition: to be almost a celebrity."

"Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix."

"The soul may sleep and the body still be happy, but only in youth."

"To smoke or not to smoke: I can make of either a life work."

"Revenge leads to an empty fullness, like eating dirt."

"Confession is good for the conscience, but it usually bypasses the soul."

"Luck: when your burst of energy doesn't run afoul of someone else's."

"Did that leave an undesirable taste in your mouth? Let’s take a swig."

"Forget about calories - everything makes thin people thinner, and fat people fatter."

"Every now and then you run across radiantly attractive people and you're delighted to find they adore you, till you realize that they adore just about everybody- and that's what's made them radiantly attractive."

"If the pain wanders, do not waste your time with doctors."

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to weave."

"What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want."

"Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest!"

"Every group feels strong once it has found a scapegoat."

"Every group of six or more has its inner circle, its outer circle, and its hangers-on."

"In every group of intimidated people, each thinks "I will rebel," but each waits for the others."

"We sometimes feel that we have been really understood, but it was always long ago, by someone now dead."

"There's only one person who needs a glass of water oftener than a small child tucked in for the night, and that's a writer sitting down to write."

"An old racetrack joke reminds you that your program contains all the winners' names. I stare at my typewriter keys with the same thought."

"A critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote."

"Everybody can write; writers can't do anything else."

"Most sermons sound to me like commercials — but I can't make out whether God is the Sponsor or the Product."

"I often pray, though I’m not really sure Anyone’s listening; and I phrase it carefully, just in case He’s literary."

"How tired God must be of guilt and loneliness, for that is all we ever bring to Him."

"Whenever we safely land in a plane, we promise God a little something."

"Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing."

""Your money or your life." We know what to do when a burglar makes this demand of us, but not when God does."

"My religious position: I think that God could do a lot better, and I'm willing to give Him the chance."

"We climb mountains because they are there, and worship God because He is not."

"Those who turn to God for comfort may find comfort but I do not think they will find God."

"In church, sacred music would make believers of us all—but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance."

"Charity is a good way of reminding God that if we can do it, He can."

"When a stranger identifies you from a friend's description, it's just as well you didn't hear the description."

"We waste a lot of time running after people we could have caught by just standing still."

"The best work is done with the heart breaking, or overflowing."