“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.”

Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.

She was not one for emptying her face of expression.

A confessional passage has probably never been written that didn’t stink a little bit of the writer’s pride in having given up his pride.

I told her I loved her and all. It was a lie, of course, but the thing is, I meant it when I said it. I’m crazy. I swear to God I am.

I don’t exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.

You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.

It’s not too bad when the sun’s out, but the sun only comes out when it feels like coming out.

Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.

That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any.

The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has — I’m not kidding.

I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful. If I’m on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I’m going, I’m liable to say I’m going to the opera. It’s terrible.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.

I am a kind of paranoid in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.

Listen, if you’re not going to be a nun or something, you might as well laugh.

Grand. There’s a word I really hate. It’s a phony. I could puke every time I hear it.

We don’t talk, we hold forth. We don’t converse, we expound.

I have always worried about things more than I should.

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.

The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work.

My children give me a great sense of wonder. Just to see them develop into these extraordinary human beings.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

I think probably kindness is my number one attribute in a human being. I’ll put it before any of the things like courage or bravery or generosity or anything else.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred.

God would seem to indicate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, or the work of man, but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the interpreters of the Gods.