If you are any kind of an artist, then validation . . . can be a result, but you're going to do the work anyway.

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.

It’s true—there are only, like, two songs about rainbows, including that one. He should be asking why there are so few songs about rainbows.

Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.

And besides, I couldn't stay at the party. It was too dangerous. I nearly died.""From what?""Boredom.

You are what you think. So just think big, believe big, act big, work big, give big, forgive big, laugh big, love big and live big.

I think anybody in front of a crowd is a comedian.

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

If prolific is writing a lot of songs, I'm that. If it's writing a lot of good songs, I'm something else.

A noble soul alone can noble souls attract; And knows alone, as ye, to hold them.

I always treat all the jobs I do as an acting class.

I'm still not sure what is meant by good fortune and success. I know fame and power are for the birds. But then life suddenly comes into focus for me. And, ah, there stand my kids.