I love to watch cities wake up, and Paris wakes up more abruptly, more startlingly, than any place I know.

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.

Courage is the power to let go of the familiar.

If there is anything unique about the human animal, it is that it has the ability to grow knowledge at an accelerating rate while being chronically incapable of learning from experience.

Guilt at least has a purpose

Worrying about the poor is one thing. To contend that equality is necessary for growth is an altogether different and more radical idea.

If you spent a proper amount of time with me, you would probably wonder if I was on drugs - I'm not. I'm just incredibly hyperactive and manic. I can be quiet and serious at the same time.

I love to write, so it rarely seems like work - even when it gets arduous.

My writing improved the more I wrote - and the more I read good writing, from Shakespeare on down.

It is only education and understanding of the past that teaches us not to repeat history.

You never escape the traps you spin yourself. Only a greater power can break a power, and then you're trapped again. Trapped forever so you cannot die.

I've known Harvey for over 40 years and I worked with him on the Burnett show for 11 years. I guess you could say we're about as close as you can get to being a comedy team.