The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor.

The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel's spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future.

The termites of reduction have always gnawed away at life: even the greatest love ends up as a skeleton of feeble memories.

Every situation is of man's making and can only contain what man contains.

Be in charge, take control of your life

Sometimes I forget that I can hurt you. That you are capable of being hurt

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam I looked into the soul of the boy next to me.

I want to go to - what's that hot country with a lot of money? - Dubai.

But people that are worried about unborn babies are the same ones that vote against kindergarten programs in Indiana or school lunch funds out of the federal government.

At bottom, to be colored means that one has been caught in some utterly unbelievable cosmic joke, a joke so hideous and in such bad taste that it defeats all categories and definitions.

Are we to have a church in which everyone's judgment is equal to everyone else's? That's not a church, it's chaos. Common sense dictates that you keep the fox out of the chicken coop.

In improvisation, there are no mistakes.

What artists have accomplished is realizing there's only a small amount of stuff that's important and then seeing what it was.

Oh, well...up until now it had been a good day, in a horrible kind of way.