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• Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.
  • “Reading and Nothingness, Of Proust in the Summer Sun,” New York Times (June 2, 1985)

• A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.
  • “Reading and Nothingness, Of Proust in the Summer Sun,” New York Times (June 2, 1985)

• A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat’s eyes don’t even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog’s eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, “What do you want me to do for you? I’ll do anything for you.” Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don’t have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing.
  • “Dogs Vis-A-Vis Cats,” Now Where Were We?, Random House (1989)

• In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is.
  • Long Time Leaving (2007)

• I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 7

• Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 17

• A convention has to be something that more than one person is moved to take hold of. It's a convention to call your sweetheart "dumplin" or "honeybun." It would also be a convention to call her "gulag," if she would stand for it, which she won't, and why would you want to be around someone who would?
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 66

• English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 93

• Usage ain't always a matter of ought.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 149

• I know, you want to make a citizen's arrest of anyone whose menu lists "Idaho potato baked in it's skin," but you can't.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 155

• I have to be firm on this: unique is not to be modified. Adding very or absolutely is like putting a propeller on a rabbit to make him hop better. It won't work, and he won't be a rabbit anymore.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 323

• People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 324

• That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp.
  • Alphabet Juice (2008), p. 359

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• The last time somebody said "I find I can write much better with a word processor" I replied, "They used to say the same thing about drugs."