Ambition like a liquid ruby stains.

The only important elements in any society are the artistic and the criminal, because they alone, by questioning the society’s values, can force it to change.

It’s a very new, not to mention vulgar, idea that the spectator’s experience should be identical to, or even have anything to do with, the artist’s.

The problem isn't to learn to love humanity, but to learn to love those members of it who happen to be at hand.

Babes, I am so bored here that I don't think, since I've come, I've ever been more than three minutes away from some really astonishing act of violence.

The truth is always multiplex.

Apocalypse has come and gone. We're just grubbing in the ashes.

The pleasures of love are really quite wonderful--though I suspect they are rather a luxury and require a certain level of socioeconomic stability to be anything other than a mode of suffering.

Don't go chattering to the stars if you're going to do it with your eyes closed.

It is easier to argue that something nobody believes in actually exists than it is to argue that something everybody believes in is unreal.

It's only ... when we're stripped of purpose that we know who we are.

Whoever is content, shall be cheerful.

And on the way home I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

When you get your, 'Who am I?', question right, all of your, 'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves

As we say in the American Institute of Wine and Food, small helpings, no seconds. A little bit of everything. No snacking. And have a good time.

Many of the architects of the Vietnam War became near pariahs as they spent the remainder of their lives in the futile quest to explain away their decisions at the time.

If we have the potential to oppress or slay millions, it’s because we also have the potential to liberate and love millions.

Comedy has always been important in my family. If you got in a good joke at the dinner table, it meant more than almost anything else.

Being scared isn't the problem. It's not running away that's the hard part.

Jackie [Kennedy] wore one of my dresses – it was made from kitchen curtain material – and people went crazy.

If you don't like what you're getting back in life, take a look at what you're putting out.