I am writing about people who are alive in the city of New York during mid-20th-century America. And these people are like a character in a play or they are figures in a short story or a novel.

The reporter wrote with the hope that he would get a by-line in the Times, a testimony to his being alive on that day and all the tomorrows of microfilm

Most journalists are restless voyeurs who see the warts on the world, the imperfections in people and places. . . . gloom is their game, the spectacle their passion, normality their nemesis.

I've always had standards about writing well. There is art in this business. There is potentially great art.

I could come up with 50 stories that I am thinking about.

Wall Street bankers supposedly back the Yankees Smith College girls approve of them. God, Brooks Brothers, and United States Steel are believed to be solidly in the Yankees' corner... The efficiently triumphant Yankee maching is a great institution, but, as they say, who can fall in love with U.S. Steel?

Sports is about people who lose and lose and lose. They lose games then they lose their jobs. It can be very intriguing.

I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.

Journalism is a voyeuristic vocation that attracts to its employment many people who are often naturally shy and insatiably curious, and each day they are assigned to view the world with a critical eye and a detached sense of intimacy.

Putting on a beautifully designed suit elevates my spirit, extols my sense of self, and helps define me as a man to whom details matter.

The Park Avenue of poodles and polished brass it is cab country, tip-town, glassville, a window-washer's paradise.

People go to restaurants for so many different reasons. To court a girl, to make some deal. Maybe to talk to some lawyer about how to get an alimony settlement better than they got last week.

It's true what they say - all the good men are married. But it's marriage that makes them good.