There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul.

I stand in the mist and cry, thinking of myself standing in the mist and crying, and wondering if I will ever be able to use this experience in a book.

Though my friends envied me because I always seemed so cheerful and confident, I was secretly terrified of practically everything.

Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

You don't have to beat a woman if you can make her feel guilty.

Husband and wife have no time left to spend together. Marriage took away our one reason for getting married.

We came to realize how little married couples see of each other once they crawl in the bourgeois box.

Maybe marriages are best in middle age. When all the nonsense falls away and you realize you have to love one another because you're going to die anyway.

We're programmed for suffering, not joy. The masochism is built in at a very early age. You're supposed to work and suffer - and the trouble is: you believe it.

Tears are a form of communication - like speech - and require a listener.

For you to be great, you must learn to convert every second of your life.

There was nothing about youth that was fair: the young hadn't done anything to deserve it, and the old hadn't done anything to drive it away.

When a police officer tells you to stay in the car, you stay in the car.

The world is a bad place. There are many wonderful people, but on the whole, humanity basically stinks.

I mean, you take a look at this, it's one way. [Mexicans] get the jobs, they get the factories, they get the cash, and all we get - we get illegal immigration and we get drugs.

When you’re young, the goal is to have a hit. You get a little older and the goal becomes to get to make another record.

Let none henceforth seek needless cause to approve The faith they owe; when earnestly they seek Such proof, conclude, they then begin to fail.

Every thing is what it is, and not another thing.

Fighting emotion with logic is like bringing a calculator to a knife fight

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.