"When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. That’s the way I remember them, heading for an exit."

“I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the rude, new buildings stand squarely in one another’s river views.”

“I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.”

“Homesickness is nothing … Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.”

“One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories of his excellence.”

“All literary men are Red Sox fans—to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.”

“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.”