I'm mad about being old and I'm mad about being American. Apart from that, OK.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.

About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Youth, with all its accompanying risks, humiliations, and uncertainties, the pressure to do it all before it’s too late.

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet and the river jumps over the mountain and the salmon sing in the street.

The world itself is the will to power - and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power - and nothing else!

I thought that all of the sacrifices and blessings of the whole history of mankind have devolved upon me. Thank you, God.

Oh ye of little faith. Not for IYD... But you didn't even try.

The Way of Tao is this: It strives not, but conquers; It speaks not, but all is made clear; It summons not, but its house is crowded; It contrives not, but the design is perfect.

The French have never produced a great philosopher. Great wine maybe, but no great philosophers.

I'm doing things that are more artistic again, more close to the material that I love. I don't disparage those things that I did. They're just not as much reflective of who I am.

All this angst, all this stuff we all feel, is just tied to making art. It's so ancient.

The knowledge that you can handle anything that comes your way is the key to allowing yourself to take risks. ... security is not having things; it's handling things.