“Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.”

There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.

In my end is my beginning.

Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.

Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.

Humor is also a way of saying something serious.

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet

Only by acceptance of the past, can you alter it

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.

Some editors are failed writers, but so are most writers.

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice.

Distracted from distraction by distraction

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

I find that when I tell lawyer jokes to a mixed audience, the lawyers don’t think they’re funny and the non-lawyers don’t think they’re jokes.

Many a true word is spoken in jest.

The joke was that President Bush only declared war when Starbucks was hit. You can mess with the U.N. all you want, but when you start interfering with the right to get caffeinated, someone has to pay.

A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

I spent many years laughing at Harry Secombe’s singing until somebody told me that it wasn’t a joke.

I laughed. Partly at the joke, partly at how Afghan humor never changed. Wars were waged, the Internet was invented, and a robot had rolled on the surface of Mars, and in Afghanistan we were still telling Mullah Nasruddin jokes.

When you can make others laugh with jokes that belittle no one and your words always unite, Hafiz will vote for you to be God.