Sometimes people say, do you want a drink? And I say, oh, I'd like to, but I'm a tragic alcoholic. I always say tragic. I'm a tragic alcoholic.

The Greeks had invented democracy, built the Acropolis and called it a day.

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings.

A zoo is a good place to make a spectacle of yourself, as the people around you have creepier, more photogenic things to look at.

There seemed to be some correlation between devotion to God and a misguided zeal for marshmallows.

All of us take pride and pleasure in the fact that we are unique, but I'm afraid that when all is said and done the police are right: it all comes down to fingerprints.

Remember that the most important thing is to try and love other people as much as they love you.

Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.

I started writing when I was twenty, and my first book came out seventeen years later.

Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.

A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.

Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.

You certainly believe in the power of love. And throughout the series, you see how love shows itself in ways that mirror the best of who we are.

Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway, " the priest added cynically, "which is why the church locks them all up in mental hospitals and euphemistically calls these institutions monasteries.

Some might claim that like the secret of flying is missing the ground, the secret to immortality is simply not dying.

Cooperation and collaboration among nations and countries can help in the process of development of promoting welfare as well as bringing peace and stability.

Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.

I don't think the English like me. I sold a colossal best seller in America, and they never really forgave me.

[Frank] Sinatra, to everyone, even Tony Bennett, was such a huge influence because he had mastered not only music, but film and radio.

Solving problems—actually solving them, not just claiming you do—solving perceived, urgent problems, is a surefire way to get the world to beat a path to your door.

Writing is not the easiest way to make a living. Your work long hours, usually all by yourself. It is not a way to make money.