“And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”

Everything is nothing, with a twist.

Can you see anything in the dark, with your sunglasses on? she asked me. The big show is inside my head, I said.

To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

How nice – to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

The only proof he needed for existence of god was music.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

Science is magic that works.

If somebody says ‘I love you’ to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? ‘I love you, too’.

There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies- God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.

All this happened, more or less.

Hockey is a unique sport in the sense that you need each and every guy helping each other and pulling in the same direction to be successful.

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

Wisdom is directly proportional to your power to overcome the failures and setbacks in life.

If you start out looking at somebody, wondering whether he’s good or bad, I think you’re starting out in the wrong direction. I think we’re all good and we’re all bad.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

I’m very direct. I don’t have tantrums. I don’t yell or shout. I do expect an awful lot from my staff, but no more than I expect of myself.

The length and breath of our influence on others are directly related to the depth of our concern for them.

I am the universe. Infinite in every direction. This is my choice.