Life is too short to waste being a productive member of society.

The Adventure called and I followed with my thumb like a character being written by an intractable author. Which, of course, I was.

It was a rotten time to try to be a man in America. Until Blue came along I’d never even spent time around a man. Hell, I’d never even seen one. Where were all the men in this once great land?

I just want to live my own life instead of everyone else’s version of it.

Over the years most of my peers had come to hate me—I never understood why. I guess I was just different and, like dogs, they could smell it. So I never had many friends.

Begging is much more difficult than it looks. Contrary to popular belief, it’s a high art form that takes years of dedicated practice to master.

Have you ever noticed how good things go to those who hate?

The simple act of sitting here sipping this cappuccino is its own testament to my commitment to living the writer’s life. Which is to say: doing nothing but doing it exceedingly well.

I wondered about my inner child. In fact, I was troubled. Did I even have an inner child, I asked myself, given that, in essence, I’d just been born?

I wouldn’t be caught dead sacrificing myself for this country.

When it rains it pours and when it shines you get melanoma.

I am so often the architect of my own pain and the engineer of my own failures.

You say you are disappointed with life. But maybe it is life that' is disappointed with you.

Instead of taxing rich people, governments borrow from them, and pay them interest for the privilege.

An artist must struggle to accept the shape of this universe - and achieve some important successes.

The highest of the world's mountains, it seems, has to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be the lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy.

[W]e're taught that if one person kills another person, that is murder; but if a government kills a hundred thousand persons, that is patriotism.

I always wanted to play a Greek god in something.

The falsest of all philosophies is that which, under the pretext of delivering men from the embarrassment of their passions, counsels idleness and the abandonment and neglect of themselves.

I'm not a fan in a rock concert, you see. I am a political leader in a great nation of the world. What interests me are France's interests.

When faced with the choice, choose happy