Californians are good at planning for the earthquake, while simultaneously denying it will happen.

Some of my best friends are illusions. Been sustaining me for years.

The moon develops the imagination, as chemicals develop photographic images.

You can always trust information given you by people who are crazy; they have an access to truth not available through regular channels.

The trouble with going crazy is that you have to go around making it up to everyone afterwards. It seems they should be making something up to you.

It's expectation that differentiates you from the dead.

Sundays are terrible because it is clear that there is no one in charge of the world. And this knowledge leave you drifting around, grappling with unfulfilled expectations and vague yearnings.

Inner resources are like natural resources; they both dry up eventually when the demands on them are heavy.

If you have enough fantasies, you're ready, in the event that something happens.

The freeway is the last frontier. It is unsurpassed as a training ground for the sharpening of survival skills.

There is no irritant as painful as an ace up your sleeve that you can never use; it's the kind of thing that causes oysters to produce pearls.

Love is a hidden treasure. You never know you have it until someone special reveals it.

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

My conscience is informed by reason. It's like Kant's categorical imperative: behave to others as you would wish they behaved to you.

Geoffrey [Howe] and I were mates, and he disagreed with [ Margaret Thatcher] position. So, we cooperated surreptitiously.

Spiritual practice . . . involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern for others' well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so.

I love all sides of the work but that doesn't mean it isn't hard.

We can be creative and generate new breakthroughs, if we're willing to work with ideas from the pool of history - both distant and more recent - despite the potential for our experiments to fail.

The appeal of writing is primarily the investigation of mystery.

I have this really beautiful Martin guitar, and it just kind of writes songs for me.

I've rarely gotten a good review in my life, yet, to paraphrase Noel Coward, I am happy to console myself with the bitter palliative of commercial success.