Psychoanalysis and Zen, in my private psychic geometry, are equal to nicotine. They are anti-existential. Nicotine quarantines one out of existence.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

I found him between a reality and a nightmare.

We will do the good work. It is our holy duty.

Gazing into his eyes, I was lost in their intensity. It was like looking into the bluest sky and carrying on to infinity. I felt mesmerised, hypnotised and transfixed all at once.

Once you appreciate one of your blessings, one of your senses, your sense of hearing, then you begin to respect the sense of seeing and touching and tasting, you learn to respect all the senses.

A pessimist is a man who has been compelled to live with an optimist.

If you're so afraid of your imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you imagine heaven?

My life is great because I made it that way. Anything other than happiness doesn't get a pass key.

If you would have peace, genuine peace, you must accept all the aspects of your personality and learn to be comfortable with them.

We do have evidence the [Donald] Trump campaign was working to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue.

If I'd had to work at Taco Bell I'd have still been out at night trying to play music.