Debauchery is perhaps an act of despair in the face of infinity.

If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

A poet is a man who puts up a ladder to a star and climbs it while playing a violin.

People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug.

Historians tell the story of the past, novelists the story of the present.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Barbarism is needed every four or five hundred years to bring the world back to life. Otherwise it would die of civilization.

There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.

Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum.

Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.

Evil became invisible when it was everywhere. Like air, everyone forgot it was there until it was blowing hard enough to knock off their hat or muss up their hair.

My life is like a Harley Ride. When I'm on my bike that's really one of the places I feel completely at home.

I know that Philadelphians hate New York actors passing off New York accents as Philadelphian when they are quite different.

Expect a most agreeable letter; for not being overburdened with subject (having nothing at all to say) I shall have no check to my Genius from beginning to end.

My whole comic persona is that of a guy who explores the id: I romanticize gluttony, I romanticize laziness, and people identify with that.

I'm never really conscious of saying, "I'm going to take on a specific role to combat a certain image in the public eye." I think that's pretty manipulative and transparent to the public anyway.

The only thing I want is something I can't have; and that is to know if, 100 years from now, people will still buy my books.

[David Tennant's] Doctor has such humanity, he seems to understand us and he's very warm, so he's a comforting Doctor to be with, and he enables us to be slightly scarier than we had been.

The water caught the Falselight glimmer like layers of shifting, translucent mirrors and formed split-second works of art in the air, but men cursed it anyway, because it made their heads wet.