When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.

Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.

Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.

The task of a writer is not to solve the problem but to state the problem correctly.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.

People should be beautiful in every way - in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts, and in their innermost selves.

Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Extreme joy and extreme sorrow are indistinguishable beyond a certain point. ("Jane Brown's Body")

My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.

My style is my personality. It's always been that way. Being a wiseguy and having fun. It's always been that way for me, when I was in high school, and in the Navy. It's not something I rehearse.

Clutter is not an attribute of information, clutter is a failure of design...fix the design rather than stripping all the detail out of the map.

Why does the New Italian navy have glass bottom boats? To see the Old Italian Navy!

I honestly don't listen to a lot of music - I spend so much time working at my own music.

Not all friendships take a long time to grow and deepen. Some are formed in an instant.

It's a bit disconcerting being treated like Madonna.

The camera introduces us to unconscious optics as does psychoanalysis to unconscious impulses.