My eyes glaze over at a writer solving tiny problems.

Talk uses up ideas. Once I have spoken them aloud, they are lost to me, dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them, like bulbs, in the rich soil of silence do they grow.

Old age is somewhat like dieting. Every day there is less of us to be observed.

My old friend, water, my good companion, my beloved mother and father: I am its most natural offspring.

one keeps one's friends better when one is alone. The corollary to this is that one loses one's friends, slowly, when one sees them too often or when they visit for too long a time.

Praise requires constant renewal and expansion.

What others regard as retreat from them or rejection of them is not those things at all but instead a breeding ground for greater friendship, a culture for deeper involvement, eventually, with them.

A hand up is worthier than one's own fist grasping a higher rung of the ladder.

Writers are entirely egocentric. To them, few things in their lives have meaning or importance unless they give promise of serving some creative purpose.

We were determined by public opinions of us. Would we think we existed without outside confirmation? And how long would we live apart from others before we began to doubt our existence?

Talk uses up ideas. ... Once I have spoken them aloud they are lost to me dissipated into the noisy air like smoke. Only if I bury them like bulbs in the rich soil of silence do they grow.

I used to use business to make money. But I've learned that business is a tool. You can use it to support what you believe in.

For a lot of people, God lives in their Bibles and they open it when they feel He has something to say.

You can curse the dead or pray for them, but don't expect them to do a thing for you. They're far too interested in watching us, to see what in heaven's name we will do next.

No. This has to do with drugs." My jaw fell open and I almost lost my toothbrush. "You're on drugs?" She pressed her mouth together. "No. You are." "I'm on drugs?" I asked, stunned. I had no idea.

To alter the money value of commodities, by altering the value of money, and yet to raise the same money amount by taxes, is then undoubtedly to increase the burthens of society.

I walk around talking to myself in accents. Usually people look at me like I'm a complete fruit loop.

Africans, we hold on to our youths and whip them into shape.

Ladies, whose bright eyes Rain influence, and judge the prize.

One might say that "Torch Song" is, in part, about the urgency of the effort to pin things down and what wild dart throwing that desire leads to.

Write a smart joke and people want to talk about it and keep the dialogue going. Also, if you can make someone laugh, it's a pronouncement that they like you on some level.