For a Russian to be chivalrous with an American is a spiritual impossibility, a conradiction in terms.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

When one cautions you, he is a 'lighthouse' and if one find faults with the lighthouse, when will that ship reach safely [to its destination]?.

It took us 2,000 years to find Noah’s Ark. Do we ever find Flight 370?

Can I tell you who is the most important fashion icon in the world? Queen Elizabeth of England. Think about that. She has never put her foot anywhere wrong and always looks fantastic.

The inheritance of a distinguished and noble name is a proud inheritance to him who lives worthily of it.

Is it more childish and foolish to insist that there is a conspiracy or that there is not?

It's true that I've made mistakes, but I know I shouldn't do them again.

Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart.

We are living in a period of commerical globalization. What we really need is spiritual globalization.

How many thoughts float in and out of your head without your stopping to identify them? How many ideas and insights have escaped because you forgot to pay attention?

Prose writers are interested mostly in life and commas.