There are no innocents. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility.

Impulsive actions led to trouble, and trouble could have unpleasant consequences.

I am a rapist and a sadistic pig,' if you get that tattoo removed I will carve it into your forehead, do you understand?

Always retain the ability to walk away, without sentimentality, from a situation that felt unmanageable. That was a basic rule of survival. Don't lift a finger for a lost cause.

Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.

Everyone has secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are

But if you want to win, you're going to have to fight.

There were not so many physical threats that could not be countered with a decent hammer.

No, I don't believe in God, but I respect the fact that you do. Everyone has to have something to believe in.

I know what kind of things I myself have been irritated by in detective stories. They are often about one or two persons, but they don't describe anything in the society outside.

I'm not going to apologize for the way I've led my life.

Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.

The destiny of man is to be more and more human.

Nowadays, for the sake of the advantage which is to be gained from the public revenues and from office, men want to be always in office.

Lenin thought abstract art was a conspiracy by the bourgeois to demoralize the proletariat. Yeah, socialist realism!

My father contracted polio on a troop train in Korea.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

Come quickly -- as soon as these blossoms open, they fall. This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers.

People are not usually deprived of their liberties all at once, but gradually, by one encroachment after another, as it is found they are disposed to bear them.

All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

Committee, n.: A group of people that, when given the task of deciding whether to start array indices from either 0 or 1, compromises to declare that they are to start from 0.5.