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

Did you ever get fed up?’ I said. ‘I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something?

Sleep tight, ya morons!

Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.

She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.

The worst thing that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.

Don’t hate me because I can’t remember some person immediately. Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress and act like everybody else.

It’s funny. All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to.

He said you were the only one who was bitter about S’s suicide and the only one who really forgave him for it. The rest of us, he said, were outwardly unbitter and inwardly unforgiving.

Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.

I don’t even know what I was running for—I guess I just felt like it.

Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

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.

The Woodruff Library Archives has done a phenomenal job archiving my son’s materials.

If you had asked me back in grade school what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said my first choice was an actor, but if I couldn’t be that, I’d want to be a superhero.

Living in L.A., everyone likes to mold you and change you. I don’t care about fame, I don’t care about being a celebrity. I know that’s part of the job, but I don’t feed into anyone’s idea of who I should be.

It is my job to be free – who else’s could it be?

I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father, and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up sometimes.

Lesbian and gay people are a permanent part of the American workforce, who currently have no protection from the arbitrary abuse of their rights on the job.

All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can’t thank them enough. I’m just honored that ‘God Only Knows’ was chosen. ‘God Only Knows’ is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I’ve ever written.

A job is not a career. I think I started out with a job. It turned into a career and changed my life.