Jazz music hashaunted America for seventy years.It has tempted us out of our lily-white reserve with its black promise of untrammeled joy.

The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.

Some books accrete things to themselves like a magnet. The writer risks sterility by subjecting the mysterious power of imagination to the devices of mere comprehension.

The idiotic industry of an ant building his hill in the path of a glacier, and imagining that he is free.

Nothing like the road to rub all the sand out of your soul.

But all I could think of was taking some books to read in jail. I held everybody up, choosing which ones to take.

Certain kinds of clichés are the narcotics of the middle class.

For invented gods invariably disappoint those who worship them.

But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.

We are, or rather our natural desire to evade pain and to attain pleasure is, the primary reason we do or say every single thing we do or say.

I'm an American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and opportunity and success - and that's getting Americanised.

Violence is never the right answer, unless used against heathens and monsters.

I do a lot of dry shampoo. My hair just works better when it's not as clean!

Even before my parents died, I felt all the responsibility to my family. I don't know why. In any business, any relationship, if something goes wrong, I feel I am to blame. It's something inside me.

The purpose of a doctor or any human in general should not be to simply delay the death of the patient, but to increase the person's quality of life.

When I grew up, we didn't have a TV, and I think more families today have ambitions of getting out of their environment, such as sending their children to university.

Your grandfather's coffin is heavier than you expect. Your father's coffin is heavier than you can bear.

Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.