Find a pile of gold and sit on it.

Self pity is easily the most destructive of the non-pharmaceutical narcotics; it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality.

Talking, talking. Spinning a web of words, pale walls of dreams, between myself and all I see.

We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we are reading printed words on a page; we begin to see images.

What art ought to do is tell stories which are moment-by-moment wonderful, which are true to human experience, and which in no way explain human experience.

The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

Fiction does not spring into the world fully grown, like Athena. It is the process of writing and rewriting that makes a fiction original, if not profound.

Art, of course, is a way of thinking, a way of mining reality.

As a rule of thumb I say, if Socrates, Jesus and Tolstoy wouldn't do it, don't.

When people are serving, life is no longer meaningless.

One of the many interesting challenges nature presents us is its apparent disinterest in maintaining the order humans crave.

Laziness bears the fruit of hunger and crimes, and those who choose the right path are those willing to pay the price

Not failure but low aim is crime.

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that's a compliment.

Pronouns are the enemy of improv.

Admittedly communism has not been achieved in Russia. State socialism has been built.

I have respect for the past, but I'm a person of the moment.

When people all wear the same thing, people notice. They aren't stupid. People don't go, "Oh, you can see right through them!"

I don't have the temperament of a performer, and I certainly couldn't do it every night.