“It wasn’t until I was 37 that I grasped the great truth that you’ve got to write your own books and nobody else’s, and then everything followed from there.”

No human endeavour can ever be wholly good… it must always have a cost.

I do think that art that doesn’t communicate is useless.

Which is better–to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?

A crowd of grade-three thinkers, all shouting the same thing, all warming their hands at the fire of their own prejudices, will not thank you for pointing out the contradictions in their beliefs. Man is a gregarious animal, and enjoys agreement as cows will graze all the same way on the side of a hill.

As soon as Oliver Twist is serialized, people who would never dream of reading [Charles] Dickens, if they hadn’t seen him on their box, buy the paperback.

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

Worse than madness. Sanity.

People don’t help much.

A star appeared…and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.

The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.

He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.

Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!

I’m always the person who’s taking everyone else’s kid and putting them on my hip, so I’ve kinda always been a mama.

There’s no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know.

At some point in time, you definitely have to go drama. Not to say that you’re going drama just because everybody else does it.

How often I found where I should be going only by setting out for somewhere else.

Moral Education is the source of that spiritual equilibrium on which everything else depends and which may be compared to that physical equilibrium or sense of balance, without which it is impossible to stand upright or to move into any other position.

I never liked jazz or anything else. Early rock n’ roll – that was music to me. Everything else was boring.

I’m a Buffalo wing magnet, a sandwich fanatic, a cheesesteak guy. But I’ll only get a cheesesteak in Philadelphia. No one else does it right.

My style of comedy is more self-deprecating. I think that makes me more relatable. When you deal with ‘topics’ – race, white versus black – you’re not separating from the pack. You’re doing what everybody else is doing.