“If there's a God out there, then i would hope he has more important things to attend to than my drinking scotch or eating pork.”

“I eat as much as I ever did, I drink more than I should, and my sex life is none of your goddamned business.”

“Reading is more important to me than eating.”

“My favorite animal is the mule. He has more sense than a horse. He knows when to stop eating — and when to stop working.”

“I have enough to eat till my hunger is stayed, to drink till my thirst is sated; to clothe myself withal; and out of doors not Callias there, with all his riches, is more safe than I from shivering; and when I find myself indoors, what warmer shirting do I need than my bare walls? what ampler greatcoat than the tiles above my head?”

“Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.”

“If your friend is sick and dying, the most important thing he wants is not an explanation; he wants you to sit with him. He's terrified of being alone more than anything else. So, God has not left us alone.”

“To sit back hoping that someday, someway, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last - but eat you he will.”

“I'm sweating scotch out of every pore in my body.”

“I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilisations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God’s grace and Christ’s help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfils all our hopes and desires.”