“Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.”

To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.

The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’

I’ve got a 1990 Porsche 911. It’s just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.

Every vote should carry a serial number, so that responsibility for harmful or careless use of the vote can be traced. Concealed voting should be outlawed.

The body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can’t do, shouldn’t do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known.

The baby boomers’ politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there’s been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.

Never fight an inanimate object.

Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How’d they get so rich? Because they’re free.

Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, ‘But doesn’t it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn’t it be set in New Guinea?’ And you say, ‘But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.’

Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.

Everybody is xenophobic to an extent.

Liberals have invented whole college majors – psychology, sociology and women’s studies – to prove that nothing is anybody’s fault.

There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It’s going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it’s the Democrats.

You’re never going to read ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ and you shouldn’t, really. It’s 900 pages.

So I wanted to create soundscapes that are evocative of places that only exist in your head – that’s where the fun, psychedelic stuff happens anyway.

They don’t realize that the actor is looking at their faces, anyway.

I don’t talk very well. With writing, you’ve time to get it right. Also I’ve found the more I talk the less I write, and if I didn’t write no one would want me to talk anyway.

You believe in God, then you don’t believe anymore and when you have a big problem, you pray anyway.

It would be hard to play a character you don’t like – for me anyway – or can’t find something in them to like.

It’s never really that much fun for me to do movies anyway, because you – you know, you have to get up very early in the morning and you have to go in and you spend a lot of time waiting around.

Being brave doesn’t mean never being afraid, you know. It means going for it anyway because you know it’s the right thing to do.

Eat well, stay fit, die anyway.