“Oh, son, I wish you hadn’t become a scenario writer!”

“Of course I loved you, you saved my life. I wish you hadn’t I wish you hadn’t I wish you’d left me alone.”

““Can I still wish you good luck?”
“You can wish me what the hell you like. It won’t make any difference. If it did, it would mean I hadn’t prepared well enough.”

“If you wish to be a writer, write.”

“You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else.”

“As satirists have pointed out for millennia, civilized behavior is artificial and ridiculous: it means pretending to be glad to see people you aren’t glad to see, praising parties you wished you hadn’t gone to, thanking friends for presents you wish you hadn’t received. Training kids to feign a passion is the art of parenting. The passions they really have belong only to them.”

“The simplest comment on my book came from my ballet teacher. She said, "I wish you hadn’t made every line funny. It’s so depressing."”

“It was disappointing, as if a wish she didn’t know she’d made hadn’t come true.”

“You know, in a way I wish I hadn’t met you two. It’s much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.”

“Tell my father I wish to be his son.”