For me the thing that signals a great story is what we might call its autonomy, the fact that it detaches itself from its author like a soap bubble blown from a clay pipe.

All profound distraction opens certain doors. You have to allow yourself to be distracted when you are unable to concentrate.

In quoting others, we cite ourselves.

Memory is a mirror that scandalously lies.

Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.

(memory is) A strange echo, which stores its replicas according to some other acoustic than consciousness or expectation.

The modern story begun, one might say, with Edgar Allan Poe, which proceeds inexorably, like a machine destined to accomplish its mission with the maximum economy of means.

We no longer believe because it is absurd: it is absurd because we must believe.

I think it is vanity to want to put into a story anything but the story itself.

The more a book is like an opium pipe, the more the Chinaman reader is satisfied with it and tends to discuss the quality of the drug rather than its lethargic effects.

Nothing is more comical than seriousness understood as a virtue that has to precede all important literature

Itinerant evangelists are the most important ambassadors and messengers on earth. They are a mighty army, spreading out across the world with a vision to reach their own people for Christ.

Don't aim to be a perfect being

Only bad golfers are lucky. They're the ones bouncing balls off trees, curbs, turtles and cars. Good golfers have bad luck. When you hit the ball straight, a funny bounce is bound to be unlucky.

Our Sovereign's Health, the Majesty of the People.

All the flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seed of today.

Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don't have to be scared of as president of the United States.

Life is short. Forgive quickly, kiss slowly and love truly.

It does not seem possible to think of oneself as normal without thinking that some other kind of person is pathological.

You do not HAVE to be angry just because you have the right to be angry.

I was a gift to my mother. She was a remarkable person. God or nature, or whatever those forces are, smiled on her, then passed me the best of her.