“The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he 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 scars on my hands from touching certain people…Certain heads, certain colours and textures of human hair leave permanent marks on me.

If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she’s late? Nobody.

It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.

You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

I’m up to my ears in unwritten words.

Success should not make you think you are God’s gift to mankind. You should never forget that you are what you are because God chose you to be there.

I don’t start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It’s not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.

I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

You make your life choices understanding that you might and do have to work harder to prove yourself.

You can choose your friends but you sho’ can’t choose your family, an’ they’re still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge ’em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don’t.

I would rather be ashes than dust.

I am buying the most unpopular, most battered stocks, but then who knows?

The first presentation of my show was given in May, 1883, at Omaha, which I had then chosen as my home. From there we made our first summer tour, visiting practically every important city in the country.