“You think of the book you’d most like to be reading, and then you sit down and shamelessly write it.”

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 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.

Life doesn’t come with an instruction book; that’s why we have fathers.

Education today is a process of filling the mind with the contents of books, emptying the contents in the examination hall and returning empty-headed.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

I’m glad I wrote the book to show what I found out about the [ Standard Oil Company]. I’m glad many people read my book and found out the truth.

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.

The younger generation is surrounded by the Internet, apps, and video games. But somehow, my books make them read.

Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.

Whatever books you may read, you cannot realize the Divine merely by intellectual effort. Oneness can only be promoted by the practice of love.