“I’m confident that I’m as intelligent as many people, but I know that I’m not as intelligent as some. So in the presence of hyperintelligent people, I’m a shrinking violet because I don’t want to look like a fool. I know a little about a lot and a lot about a little.”

Only two groups of people intimidate me absolutely: salespeople and the French.

I’m looking for something that gives me a chance to stretch. Because I have my own work, and I can do anything I want in my own work – juggle, tap dance, anything I want.

I always look old when I work because I get so upset and tense that my face wrinkles up like a prune, I can’t stop it.

In a marriage, you struggle and struggle and struggle, and then you realize that you have to ride the horse in the direction it’s going. You stop trying to pull the reins in another direction.

People have an obligation to live up to their potential.

Honey, I can smell the scent of another woman from 500 paces.

Even if the whole human race dies off because we keep fighting and killing each other and being heartless, the planet will take care of itself. Eventually, after millions of years.

Total contentment is only for cows.

If you’re passionate about something, then you should pick up your flag and run with it.

A lot of people say that my life is wasted on me because I could be a bigger asshole than I am, but I’ve chosen not to be.

The outside world doesn’t have a lot to offer. You have to make your own heaven in your own home.

There’s a kind of emotional exploration you plumb with a friend that you don’t really do with your family.

I’m mad about God! That’s why I’m divine.

If I don’t feel right about what I’m in, I don’t feel right about anything.

[On Denmark:] … that little country of cottage cheese and courage.

I tried to charm the pants off Bob Dylan, but everyone will be disappointed to learn that I was unsuccessful. I got close – a couple of fast feels in the front seat of a Cadillac.

Which is better – to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?

One’s intelligence may march about and about a problem, but the solution does not come gradually into view. One moment it is not. The next it is there.

Intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don’t sit around and call each other names. That’s what you can find on a third grade playground.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

The one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love.

The mob spirit has grown with the increasing intelligence of the Afro-American.

Personally, I’d never seen a graphic novel. I knew they existed because friends of mine like Jonathan Ross collect them and some very literate and intelligent people really rate the graphic novel as a form.

If intelligence is the triumph of life, the spoken word is the marvellous means by which this intelligence is manifested.