Well, we are terribly divided politically, yes, and, you know, I don't mean to intimidate you and your listeners but I have a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

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.

What I want from you comrade, what the world wants from you, O dearest, are the neurons of steel, within which dwells a mind of the same material of which the thunderbolt is made.

And finally

The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honour the territorial imperative.

Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

I know I'm not God, are you? Don't be silly. God? God? Everybody's God? Don't be silly.

Never be ashamed of your problems, your body, yourself. You are worth life.

For us there is but one crime: to be untrue to ourselves.

Goodness in words creates trust, goodness in thinking creates depth, goodness in giving creates love.

To all the teachers that told me I'd never amount to nothing.