How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

The streets of Vienna are paved with culture, the streets of other cities with asphalt.

Someone who can write aphorisms should not fritter away his time in essays.

Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country.

I had a terrible vision: I saw an encyclopedia walk up to a polymath and open him up.

The sound principle of a topsy-turvy lifestyle in the framework of an upside-down world order has stood every test.

An aphorism is never exactly true; it is either a half-truth or one-and-a-half truths.

A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.

Newspapers have roughly the same relationship to life as fortune-tellers to metaphysics.

Christianity has enriched the erotic meal with the appetizer of curiosity and spoiled it with the dessert of remorse.

The devil is an optimist if he thinks he can make people worse than they are.

The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy.

Rare and precious gifts, gold and myrrh and frankincense, to offer a king.

The Saints are the Sinners who keep on trying.

Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse. She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse.

I'm a very jaded and cynical person.

I think that's the great thing about being with, having a dog, is it kind of forces you to be in the present because that's definitely where they're spending their time.

I thought I would spend the rest of my life searching for little reminders of you.

I lived in a small city on the Mississippi River across from Iowa, so I didn't have a country upbringing, but in high school we would go drink kegs in cornfields.

We have environmental laws for a reason: to protect endangered biodiversity. And as a country that has one of the highest loss of species anywhere in the world, they're important.

Being Canadian and from Winnipeg, I have the spirit of a dreamer because of the cold, and being in the basement thinking of possibilities of where else I can be in the world, in a good way!