A Jewish man with parents alive is a fifteen-year-old boy, and will remain a fifteen-year-old boy till they die. - Philip Roth

...and then this amazing creature — to whom no one has ever said "Shah!" or "I only hope your children will do the same to you someday!"

The concerns of fiction, let it be said, are not those of a statistician — or of a public-relations firm. The novelist asks himself, "What do people think?"; the PR man asks, "What will people think?"

American society [...] not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possession, money, property — on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happiness and success.