Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

"When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than read."

Don't be a writer. Writing is an escape from something. You be a scientist.

She did her work with the thoroughness of a mind that reveres details and never quite understands them.

"Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless."