But I don't distinguish between being laughed with, and laughed at. I'll take either.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.

A lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena.

Dear Nettie, I don't write to God no more, I write to you.

Every man should have a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.

The worst passion we mortals cherish is the desire to possess. Even when we know that our final destination is a hole not more than three feet square, we have the strongest craving

But every day I go to work I'm making a bet that the universe is simple, symmetric, and aesthetically pleasing — a universe that we humans, with our limited perspective, will someday understand.

I think that for the developing world there are many versions of capitalism, and countries have to choose one that's appropriate.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

Human experience throughout the ages has been enhanced through learning, information and communication.

I mean, you know, you're not going to change the human animal. And the human animal really doesn't get a lot smarter.