I used to think people were like lighthouses. That they were yhere to protect you. But they're no. People are lime whirlpools. They pull you in

Build your castle of dreams but don't live in it.

Translation is the art of failure.

When you are success oriented it is much easier to succeed than to fail.

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he knows he can't.

Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!

Every man's vanity ought to be his greatest shame; and every man's folly ought to be his greatest secret.

When I watch TV I can tell when someone is punching the joke and telling me when to laugh (I’ll decide when to laugh, thank you very much).

We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.

When people find a man of the most distinguished abilities as a writer their inferior while he is with them, it must be highly gratifying to them.

Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar's own figuring, hardly human at all.