I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.

it is always yesterday, tomorrow, and 3 years ago today. It is always your birthday. It is always the future, the present, and the past. It is always eternity that will last.

The irony of seeking a shrink: they are successful in shrinking your brain but unfortunately they also make your wallet shrink.

What doesn't kill us makes a good story.

And then like thunder broke the frost, The chill wall fell, and morrowless Immortal maid and man embraced, Their light and shadow mingling.

In my own recent String Trio I attempt to superimpose two quite different sets of formal strategies, both of which, ultimately, refer back to historical precedent.

Who we are varies according to our awareness. When you are more aware, you are someone else than when you are less aware.

It is difficult to speak of the universal specifically.

Only God knows the good that can come about by reading one good Catholic book.

It is foolish to pluck out one's hair for sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.