The hopes and fears of all our years are here with us tonight.

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.

This is my present, also yours, free to choose. I am here at your side, alive, and no ghost. Let beauty and care forge the weapons tonight.

I feel the 21st century is another new age. Not only can we collaborate again with nature, but we have to. It's an emergency.

[Paris] is dirty. It has pigeons and black yards. The people have white skin.

I never expected my graduate degrees to give me all the practical how-to's that can perhaps only be learned through the school of hard knocks.

The core of character lies in each individual story person's ability to care about something; to feel implicitly or explicitly that something is important.

The exceptions of the scrupulous put one in mind of some general pardons where everything is forgiven except crimes.

Music informs my work so intensely. The better actor I become, the better pianist I become, and vice versa.

Our non-co-operation is with the system the English have established in India, with the material civilization and its attendant greed and exploitation of the weak.

Nothing dries sooner than a tear.

The errors of faith are better than the best thoughts of unbelief.