“when your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.”

And I really do believe that the most important thing is the way you live your life on earth. But I think it’s enormously comforting to believe that you’re going to see your loved ones.

The word ‘charismatic’ was made for Fidel Castro. You would have liked him, I would have liked him. Then you had to stop and say, ‘Just a minute. This is a man who does not believe in freedom of the press…does not believe in democracy as we know democracy, had political prisoners.’

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.

No one could ad lib like Peter. You would think that it was all scripted, he was so poetic, but it wasn’t.

New York is a galaxy of adventure at once elegant, exciting and bizarre. It’s a city that moves so fast, it takes energy just to stand still.

Don’t confuse being stimulating with being blunt.

Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.

If you were a tree, what kind would you be?

Life sometimes brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear. But bear them you can, and bear them you will, and your life can have a purpose.

Small children do not belong at an adult party, and especially should not be used like trained midgets to help serve martinis.

Show me someone who never gossips, and I’ll show you someone who isn’t interested in people.

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: ‘On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.

Homogeneity is much to be admired – in milk, for instance – but not for parties.

A good laugh makes any interview, or any conversation, so much better.

If it’s a woman it’s caustic, if it’s a man it’s authority, If it’s a woman it’s too pushy, if it’s a man it’s aggressive in the best sense of the word.

A conversation isn’t a competition.

Masturbation is our first and natural form of sexual activity and if that’s inhibited or damaged, then we suffer for the rest of our lives.

For the first time, you can actually see the losers turn green

My first record I owned was by Les Paul.

First the pork chops, then morality

The first session I did with the Stones was an accident. I just happened to be wandering down the hallway of the same studio.

I remember when TV networks believed in the First Amendment. It is a messed up situation when Miley Cyrus gets a laugh, and Phil Robertson gets suspended.

The first thing the federal government can do to help is get out of the way.

I hope some historian will confirm that I was the first cartoonist to use the word ‘booger’ in a newspaper comic strip.