“One man’s theology is another man’s belly laugh.”

You can have peace. Or you can have freedom. Don’t ever count on having both at once.

An armed society is a polite society.

Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.

Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn’t there.

It’s an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip.

One could write a history of science in reverse by assembling the solemn pronouncements of highest authority about what could not be done and could never happen.

The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.

Yield to temptation. It may not pass your way again.

Theologians can persuade themselves of anything.

Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.

I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured.

The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

They didn’t want it good, they wanted it Wednesday.

Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy.

Everyone opens up to one another right away. That’s a terrific thing. I love that about actors. They know how personal this job is.

The sheer endlessness of books outfaced her and she had no idea how to go on; there was no system to her reading, with one book leading to another, and often she had two or three on the go at the same time.

I used to say I wanted to genuflect to a woman, put her up on a pedestal higher and higher, way up beyond my grasp…Then I’d find another one.

When people are laughing, they’re generally not killing one another.

How do the stems connect to the roots?’ ‘Where is the mist coming from?’ ‘Why does one tree seem darker than another?’ These questions are implicitly asked and answered in the process of sketching.

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another themeM

I was watching Revolution, and the things I did in that picture, holy smokes! I can’t believe I did that, it’s like another person. It’s the thought of it, it’s just appalling to me.

That is an important part of my success. Another big part of my success is that I hated not to finish a race.