“Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.”

I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.

It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night.

It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear.

You won’t find reasonable men on the tops of tall mountains.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

Graffiti is beautiful; like a brick in the face of a cop.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

He had that rare weird electricity about him – that extremely wild and heavy presence that you only see in a person who has abandoned all hope of ever behaving normally.

If there is in fact, a heaven and a hell, all we know for sure is that hell will be a viciously overcrowded version of Phoenix.

There are always risks in challenging excessive police power, but the risks of not challenging it are more dangerous, even fatal.

It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids.

I’m a word freak. I like words. I’ve always compared writing to music. That’s the way I feel about good paragraphs. When it really works, it’s like music.

I was never trying, necessarily, to be an outlaw. It was just the place in which I found myself.

There is no story unless you’ve written it.

Avoid being seized by the police. The cops are not your friends. Don’t tell them anything.

We can stand affliction better than we can prosperity, for in prosperity we forget God.

It’s not like I’m trying not to be worse! I’m trying to be gooder!

The untold secret of McDonald’s is that when you sell a restaurant to a franchisee, sales typically go up a lot because the franchisees do a much better job managing the store.

The will of God is never exactly what you expect it to be. It may seem to be much worse, but in the end it’s going to be a lot better and a lot bigger.

The people of the United States are one of the people I most admire in the world. The only thing I don’t understand is why a country that manages to do so well cannot do better in choosing its president.

Almost any decision is better than no decision — just keep moving.

To be successful is to be helpful, caring and constructive, to make everything and everyone you touch a little bit better.

As a writer I’m merely a journalist who has learned to write better than others.