If you’re an alcoholic or a drug addict, we flirt with death. We pull ourselves to the brink of destruction and if we’re lucky we pull ourselves back. We all have that in us.

My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am, and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

We are dying from overthinking. We are slowly killing ourselves by thinking about everything. Think. Think. Think. You can never trust the human mind anyway. It's a death trap.

Life's too short to deal with other people's insecurities.

No expectations. Ask nothing, expect nothing and accept everything, and life is very well.

A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

I don't believe in nepotism. I don't much like the idea of parents who interfere.

Relish everything that's inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

The whole point of courage, to overcome your fear. That's the interesting thing, when courage bleeds through the fear.

I always liked to take the plunge, you know, I'd jump in at the deep end and hope that I'd find land somehow, or hope I'd float or survive. That's more or less the way I've gone through my life.

You're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling?

Make me a shadow on the wall.

What, in all very seriousness, the hell was going on?

Legitimate authority to be, to do or to have; as the right to be a king, the right to do one's neighbor, the right to have measles, and the like.

I guess I am attracted to older women. I'm looking for a 40-something who has had her heart broken two or three hundred times. She's going to be fun!

Success is not about money and power. Real success is about relationships. There's no point in making $50 million a year if your teenager thinks you're a jerk and you spend no time with your wife.

Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring Him forever.

Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.

I have to tell you I enjoy Jon Stewart. That's the truth. I actually think he's very funny. I've paid to see him do his stand-up routine.

Meat is a tremendous environmental challenge. It contributes enormous amounts of greenhouse gas, especially beef eating.

A biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may well have as many as a thousand.