In the Netherlands now, I imagine it's legal to marry your own children. Get them pregnant, and you can abort your unborn grandbabies in a free clinic that used to be a church.

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.

I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.

Strength of character is never with those who blindly follow. You need to be able to make your own choices and walk your own path.

The rights we have as free individuals is the right to choose as we please.

I sent my Soul through the Invisible Some letter of that After-life to spell And by and by my Soul returned to me And answered "I Myself am Heav'n and Hell."

Generally we don't really consciously do it as a purpose-driven thing. ... It's really just a response to life.

We may seem great in an employment below our worth, but we very often look little in one that is too big for us.

I know a lot of people that still buy comics, go to the shop every week, I know people who read them on an iPad. My brother reads on an iPad every week, he downloads his comics every week.

Democracy is like a tambourine, not everyone can be trusted with it.

Your saying 'I do not understand you' is praise beyond my worth, and an insult you do not deserve.

Beauty is a frail good.