The heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality and the heartbreaking impossibilty of lying about it

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.

In politics all abstract terms conceal treachery.

Why should I forget the past experienced? I can only let go of the pain.

How much of what is there do you allow yourself to see?

(Abraham Lincoln's) weathered face was homely as a plowed field.

Any claim to actual identification as a drama must rest upon the construction of a plot independent of the assignment of affliction to the protagonist.

One can live without candy, but one cannot live without bullets.

Classical music has been based on works people love and come back to for aural comfort.

I don't think that bands that make it on their first album are as strong as bands that don't: there is nowhere to go but down.

Life’s like that. As we grow and change, some things we’ve experience before take on new meaning. It’ll happen for the rest of your life.