I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.

I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything.

There are only three things that can kill a farmer: lightning, rolling over in a tractor, and old age.

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

That's the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it's gone, it's too late to get it back.

Hunters will tell you that a moose is a wily and ferocious forest creature. Nonsense. A moose is a cow drawn by a three-year-old.

Geologists are never at a loss for paperweights.

Of all the things I am not very good at, living in the real world is perhaps the most outstanding.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

Protons give an atom its identity, electrons its personality.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

There are things in life you hope to do some day - like ride in a hot air balloon or go to Paris- and there are things that you know you will never do because, in a nutshell, the desire isn't there.

Definition of a zombie

I was not frightened as they were, for the very violence of his threats showed how weak he was.

You don't get harmony when everyone sings the same note.

While the State exists there can be no freedom when there is freedom there will be no State.

Tell the audience what you're going to say, say it; then tell them what you've said.

The fundamental law of human beings is interdependence. A person is a person through other persons.

I'm at my best when I'm exhausted and under pressure.

We didn't think taxes ought to go up. They ought to go down. We didn't think the census ought to be weakened.

I have a work ethic. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it.