A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches

I know family comes first, but shouldn't that mean after breakfast?

It's always me, isn't it? I'm not really a very nice person, but for some reason it's always me that they come to with their problems.

The key to a happy life is to have accomplishments to be proud of and purpose to look forward to, and at the moment I had both. How wonderful it was to be me.

When faced with people who have very limited conversational skills and no apparent desire to cultivate any it's always easier to simply go along.

Since I am not actually a real human being, my emotional responses are generally limited to what I have learned to fake.

It really is better to be lucky than to be good.

I mean, really: what kind of person could possibly dislike me?

I had become a perfect fake human, saying the stupid and pointless things that humans say to each other all day long.

Of course it was a terrible thing, and the world would be a much better place without someone in it who could do that, but did that mean we had to miss lunch?

There are still very few laws against thinking, although I am sure they're working hard on that in Washington.

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

The only people who attain power are those who crave for it.

Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology.

If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it.

I've never been good at being nostalgic, and I've never been able to focus on sound without having a voice that's very here-and-now.

Deny the world, defy the devil, despise the flesh, and delight yourself only in the Lord.

Chance favors the well prepared. The more stuff you throw in, the more chances you have of looking like, 'I did that.'

But hope will make thee young, for Hope and Youth Are children of one mother, even Love.

Undisguised clarity is easily mistaken for arrogance.

What we value about music and literature are the moments that they create in our minds when we encounter them.