Don’t worry about being good…. Aspire to be authentic.

You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.

My life is like a memento mori painting from European art: there is always a grinning skull at my side to remind me of the folly of human ambition.

Slice a pear and you will find that its flesh is incandescent white. It glows with inner light. Those who carry a knife and a pear are never afraid of the dark.

Zoo is an artificial territory, an approximation. Civilization is our natural territory.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!

We commonly say in the trade that the most dangerous animal in a zoo is Man.

I know zoos are no longer in people's good graces. Religion faces the same problem. Certain illusions about freedom plague them both.

If you stumble at mere believability, what are you living for? Isn't love hard to believe?

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live.

To change one’s life: 1. Start immediately. 2. Do it flamboyantly. 3. No exceptions.

When I walk along with two others, from at least one I will be able to learn.

The art world is molting - some would say melting. Galleries are closing; museums are scaling back.

As a writer, as a storyteller, you have to have your emotions close, and the older I've gotten, the less I've worried about not displaying emotions.

I'm a native New Yorker, so I'm edgier; I kind of tell it like it is.

I think all good actors are personalities. If they're not, they're not stars. What makes you a star is horsepower.

I don't get easily bored. I'm not that kind of person.

I knew I was dog meat. Luckily, I'm the high-priced dog meat that everybody wants. I'm the good-quality dog meat. I'm the Alpo of the NBA.

From my earliest youth, I have known that while one is obliged to plan with care the stages of one's journey, one is entitled to dream, and keep dreaming, of its destination.

Nothing's done well when it's done out of self-interest.