“With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.”

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

Americans want to go to heaven without dying.

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.

If you wonder which is the stronger sex, watch which one twists the other around her little finger.

I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing’s fun. You’re getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.

Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.

Let the meek inherit the earth — they have it coming to them.

I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.

I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.

She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.

I’m definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won’t. Then three years later I will finally try it and it’ll kill them. I got to give them more credit.

There is definitely an addiction to money that I have.

You can’t change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you leave them on everything you touch; they are definitely not a secret.

The definitive freedom-sustaining and life-enhancing principles of democracy in living action.

I’ve had the same core group of friends that I’ve always had. We’re surfing, so that definitely keeps you grounded.

We always feel threatened by things we don’t know. But, there are definitely some weird things going on.

Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a ‘toy’ you’re definitely onto something.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.