I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted.

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.

It is only because a person has volitions of the second order that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking freedom of the will.

I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.

As a philosopher, I'm not obliged to explore every unknown wilderness.

Thank you, Jane Birkin, for providing me with infinite outfit ideas and the confidence to dress like a boy but act like a girl.

The 'missing link' between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.

Remove failure as an option and your chances for success become infinitely better.

If the audience are leaving in ambulances, you know you've done a good job

It worries me that young singers think you can shortcut the training and go straight to fame and fortune, and programmes like Pop Idol have encouraged that.

First of all, the most important, that is to learn everything good that has survived from other times, and carefully to watch the bad - and throw it out.

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.

Sometimes the answer to our prayers is to become the answer to someone else's prayers.

Join The 5 am Club. Your most valuable hours are 5am-8am. They have the least interruptions.

Somethings don't always work out the way you plan. The main thing is to keep trying, do better next time, and deal with disappointment if it comes.