Humor is necessary - it allows the reader to come up for air before dunking them under again. I need humor and I need it on the page to keep the reader going.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

I love what I do, so I don't mind working.

It's not just about facts, information and technical know how... Gardens are about time, observation and intuition.

We should have a music of our own - if possible, without any Sauerkraut.

If I can keep this up and nothing interferes with my progress, one of these days I might be able to contribute something to the world.

I think I've got a lot of dark lines in this record [Wild Things] that I've hidden quite nicely among the nice things.

All I ask of food is that it doesn't harm me.

For me, there's always a huge attraction in playing real people. But with it comes an incredible sense of responsibility because you're playing a real person in a real event.

Psychoanalysis can provide a theory of 'progress,' but only by viewing history as a neurosis.

We cannot take a step in our Christian life without the help of the Lord, because we are weak.

I want to touch people's lives with my music and my lyrics.