He's never known anything like it! But then, he has never known anything to write home about, so this is nothing to write home about.

Be happy -- if you're not even happy, what's so good about surviving?

Life in a box is better than no life at all, I expect. You'd have a chance at least. You could lie there thinking: Well, at least I'm not dead.

There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it.

We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.

You can't treat royalty like people with normal perverted desires.

For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.

Uncertainty is the normal state.

The truth is, we value your company, for want of any other. We have been left so much to our own devices—after a while one welcomes the uncertainty of being left to other people's.

Death followed by eternity the worst of both worlds. It is a terrible thought.

Death is the ultimate negative.

A DESPERATE MAN, HE'S A READY-MADE VICTIM

I have yet to go through a struggle I didn't smile at later.

I subscribe to William Faulkner's' view that history is not just about what we were before but who we are now.

It take 15,000 casualties to train a major general.

Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it's that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through-originality.

We cannot have islands of excellence in a sea of slovenly indifference to standards.

It is true that we are made of dust. And the world is also made of dust. But the dust has motes rising.

I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.

Anybody who is born in Santa Rosa must turn out to be either an artist or a poet, for the spirit of the hills gets into your blood out there.

There are always distractions, if you allow them.