“To love another person you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.”

If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

I would have run all the way and I would have gone up to the largest and leatheriest of the denizens and said: If you truly love me, kill the bartender.

The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.

One should always be wary of anyone who promises that their love will last longer than a weekend.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

The trouble with European cities is that they are drenched in their history, almost all of which is terrible.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

I don’t really act. I say the words the way I would say them if I meant them.

To my disappointment I now realized that to know all is not to forgive all. It is to despise everybody.

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret.

I went out into the world when I was about 22. I wrote books and I illustrated books and did book covers, and I taught tap-dancing, and I was a model in the art school. I had no ability for any of those things, but what else could I do?

If at first you don’t succeed, failure may be your style.

What would you be like if you were the only person in the world? If you want to be truly happy you must be that person.

I’ve never not been famous.

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically – for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist – but then what isn’t?

All things are filled full of signs, and it is a wise man who can learn about one thing from another.

Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

Rock n’ roll sounded like music from another planet. The first time around, we had people like Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis – all them people.

Prince Paul is another good friend; he’s like an older brother. He’ll criticise and be brutally honest with you. That’s what I like about Paul.

Things which are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another.

You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

If I say I like one person, that means everybody that voted for the other person doesn’t like me. So, why would I do that?

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.