Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

Language is more fashion than science, and matters of usage, spelling and pronunciation tend to wander around like hemlines.

A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

Anything goes and nothing matters.

Thirty-two coups d'etat are enough.

I had to take my makeup off at work every night. I wasn't allowed to do it at home because my mom said that when your work day is done, you're done with work.

Few things make the life of a parent more rewarding and sweet as successful children.

The public is more familiar with bad design than good design. It is, in effect, conditioned to prefer bad design, because that is what it lives with. The new becomes threatening, the old reassuring.

My whole thing is if it wasn't for people like ya'll and people like them I wouldn't be me. I love every minute of it.

Where there is no purity, there is no Unity. Without Unity you cannot attain Divinity. Then your life is just a waste. First purity, next Unity, then you realize your Divinity.

I suffer from the delusion that every product of my imagination is not only possible, but always on the cusp of becoming real.

Optimism is necessary even if you don't instinctively feel it.