“Success and failure are equally disastrous.”

I try to work every day because you have no refuge but writing.

William Saroyan wrote a great play on this theme, that purity of heart is the one success worth having. “In the time of your life–live!”

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love.

Youth must be wanton, youth must be quick, Dance to the candle while lasteth the wick.

Take by surprise and the world gives up resistance.

Openings come quickly, sometimes, like blue space in running clouds. A complete overcast, then a blaze of light.

The human heart would never pass the drunk test…. If you took the human heart out of the human body and put a pair of legs on it and told it to walk a straight line, it couldn’t do it.

Some mystery should be left in the revelation of character in a play, just as a great deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of character in life, even in one’s own character to himself.

Time doesn’t take away from true friendship, nor does separation.

Don’t you just love these long rainy afternoons in New Orleans when an hour isn’t just an hour — but a little bit of eternity dropped in your hands — and who knows what to do with it?

A prayer for the wild at heart kept in cages.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

I always said little Truman had a voice so high it could only be detected by bats.

You see, baby, after a glass or two of wine I’m inclined to extravagance.

I think that hate is a feeling that can only exist where there is no understanding.

Kill off all my demons and my angels might die too.

The most disastrous thing that you can ever learn is your first programming language.

Drugs ruin peoples lives, break up families and have disastrous effects on our communities.

Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous.