High school is such a shared experience in North American culture.

Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.

Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.

You can't fake creativity, competence, or sexual arousal.

Fondue sets, martini shakers and juicing machines: three things the world could live completely without.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

Eagles are seagulls with a good hairdo.

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude.

Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?

When we constantly ask for miracles, we're unraveling the fabric of the world. A world of continuous miracles would not be a world, it would be a cartoon.

I once wrestled with an angel. He won, but I learned a few things.

If man were happy, he would be the more so, the less he was diverted, like the saints and God.

Men should always change diapers. It's a very rewarding experience. It's mentally cleansing. It's like washing dishes, but imagine if the dishes were your kids, so you really love the dishes.

A writer's business is minding other people's business ... all the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.

He turned slowly like a fridge door opening.

After its hothouse incubation in the seventies, appropriation breathed important new life into art. This life flowered spectacularly over the decades - even if it's now close to aesthetic kudzu.

The problem [ of the twenty-two million Afro-Americans] is so broad that it's going to take the inner working of all organizations.

Cubans must prove that they're political refugees. And if they can prove that they're really fleeing persecution, well, they would qualify as refugees.

I do not know what I can do for this world but I will not let any harm come to you

You know, you're really nobody in L.A. unless you live in a house with a really big door.