Beauty is not a human invention. - Saul Bellow

What do women really want? They eat green salad and drink human blood.

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom — which is bordered on all sides by isolation — is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet.

I think that New York is not the cultural center of America, but the business and administrative center of American culture.