Barbershop conversations are irrefutable proof that heads exist for the sake of hair.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

God takes great joy in the passionate romantic love between a husband and wife.

Man is a tireless traveller wandering in the dark valleys of his past!

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eyeThan twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.

I'm not bothered by the idea of getting old, or I guess you could say by having arrived at old. I was 10 when my mom turned 55. For 1955, she was a very old mom.

To me, jazz is a place where anything is possible.

If you're smart, you often want a feedback loop so you know if what you've done is... is right.

The Bible's blind, the Torah's deaf, the Qur'an is mute; if you burned them all together you'd get close to the truth.

What you need to know is very little, but to know that little takes very very much.

As far as songwriters, I've always been a fan of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and George Gershwin; those guys mean a lot to me.

I am an artisan. I only became an artist when people watch what I do. That is when it becomes art.