I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

His weakness was his belief that evil had boundaries.

I was born with the devil in me,' [Holmes] wrote. 'I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing.

Time lost can never be recovered...and this should be written in flaming letters everywhere.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

It was so easy to disappear, so easy to deny knowledge, so very easy in the smoke and din to mask that something dark had taken root. This was Chicago, on the eve of the greatest fair in history.

Beneath the stars the lake lay dark and sombre," Stead wrote, "but on its shores gleamed and glowed in golden radiance the ivory city, beautiful as a poet's dream, silent as a city of the dead.

I must confess a shameful secret: I love Chicago best in the cold.

Chicago has disappointed her enemies and astonished the world

Leaves hung in the stillness like hands of the newly dead.

. . . why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow.

If Nietzsche is correct, that to shame a man is to kill him, then any honest attempt at autobiography will be an act of self-destruction.

God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

Now is the time. It is never too late to start something.

Unfortunately, satisfaction is linked partly to results

The only time I get recognised is when I go somewhere that is showing 'Coupling' on local television.

I bought my son an indestructible toy. Yesterday he left it in the driveway. It broke my car.

Home is the place you can go when you're whipped.

All the athletes are individuals. This isn't a team sport. We all have our own styles, our own clothing preferences and our own way of doing things. That's the way I do things and I'm proud of it.

The interesting thing about procrastination is that is has more to do with what we fail to do than with what we do.

I think one can achieve a very pleasant lifestyle by treating human beings, fellow human beings, very well.