Once a crowd chased me for an autograph. "Beat it", I said, "go sit on a tack!" "We made you", they said. "Like hell you did", I told them.

If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything.

As one goes through life, one learns that if you don't paddle your own canoe, you don't move.

Never complain. Never explain.

I have no romantic feelings about age. Either you are interesting at any age or you are not. There is nothing particularly interesting about being old - or being young, for that matter.

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.

I have not lived as a woman. I have lived as a man. I've just done what I damn well wanted to, and I've made enough money to support myself, and ain't afraid of being alone

You politicians remain professional because the voters remain amateur.

If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased.

If you want to sacrifice the admiration of many men for the criticism of one, go ahead, get married.

God hears every prayer.

I let myself flop - so gently, so slowly - into my one real chair and tried to make myself understand that I was on the doorstep of the universe.

Mostly, all book-told gods are as little as the little men who wrote them idiots into existence.

The sound of natural things was wonderful to us. In the middle of all the suffering, it seemed pure, untouched.

Every moment was a precious thing, having in it the essence of finality.

But the French writers always had more originality and independence than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long since ceased to exist for them.

Success always necessitates a degree of ruthlessness. Given the choice of friendship or success, I'd probably choose success.

Each of my books took roughly one and a half years to write. Some may have taken a shorter time to write the draft and a longer time to revise, while others were the opposite.

I never learned to read music.