I thought of myself as kind of an anarchist all my whole adult life, from the days when I was 15 or 16.

Yo! You’re my dope dealer not my thesis adviser. If I wanted your opinion about my dissertation, I’d have asked for it, Motherfucker!

“Et Tu, Babe” was born out of my absolute certainty that a writer’s life was solitary and insular, and I was happy with that. I love reading and writing, it’s my whole life.

Sometimes I think my purpose is as a saboteur when I'm working with other people, derailing what they're trying to do or taking things to a ludicrous extremity.

One of the things that struck me as unique about Hollywood is that I never had bad meetings. There were all enthusiastic, but meaninglessly enthusiastic.

I think to simply make fun of something isn't particularly interesting. I try to not just do a parody of something or belittle something or disparage something.

I was an infinitely hot and dense dot.

The interesting thing about something in the back of your mind is that it can travel pretty far back in your mind.

It's in great joy that we grasp truth.

I can tell from about 20 yards away when someone has a manuscript for me. I can just tell - they have that look.

I think of memory as a game, that is as something one engages in with a very profound kind of "playfulness."

It is intolerable to have one's sufferings twinned with anybody else's.

Nobody holds a good opinion of a man who has a low opinion of himself.

I'd rather do my own performance than copy someone else's.

Death, like an overflowing stream, Sweeps us away: our life's a dream.

Whenever the Lord holds us in suspense, and delays his aid, he is not therefore asleep, but, on the contrary, regulates all His works in such a manner that he does nothing but at the proper time.

The right decision is the wrong decision if it's made too late.

Just as a mountain of snow is nothing but water, so also the whole universe is nothing but bliss.

Everything that's prose isn't verse and everything that isn't verse is prose. Now you see what it is to be a scholar!

All of the great prophets of modern times have come from the desert and were uneducated: Mohammed, Jesus and myself.

If I'm remembered for having done a few good things and if my presence here has sparked some good energies, that's plenty.