"Clara Winter,' he said. 'You are a word person and don't ever forget it.'He was right. He knew. He could tell. It's something that can be sensed. There's a difference between word-people and non-word-people."

"No one can be as calculatedly rude as the British which amazes Americans who do not understand studied insult and can only offer abuse as a substitute."

"My philosophy is really based on humility. I don't think we know enough to fix either diagnostics or therapeutics. The future of psychiatry is clinical neuroscience, based on a much deeper understanding of the brain."

"A creative writing teacher at San Jose State used to say about clichés: 'Avoid them like the plague.' Then he'd laugh at his own joke. The class laughed along with him, but I always thought clichés got a bum rap. Because, often, they're dead-on. But the aptness of the clichéd saying is overshadowed by the nature of the saying as a cliché."