What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Wasn't there only one respectable memento of a man worth keeping, the kind that draws Valentines and learns to spell Mississippi?

Betrayal and dishonor is usually an inside job. Keep it 'sucka-free', loved one!

Scatter as a prayerescaping my lips...as orchidsblooming in clouds.

I cannot stress this enough: do not take powerful hallucinogens before going to a Holocaust memorial.

It is unthinkable to have a British countryside that doesn't have actual functioning farmers riding tractors, cows in fields, things like that.

You can butcher the sheep only once. But if you are careful, you can shear the sheep every year.

I suppose directing on set is the most fun because it's a good crack and you feel you're on the battlefield whereas writing is a fairly solitary undertaking.

Harry taught me that death isn't the end, it's the beginning.

For me, Sun Tzu's statement that military force is based upon deception is an extraordinary statement.

I've always been freaked out in deep open water if there's a potential of sharks around.