We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.

I know what to do with my life. I just don't know what to do with this one night.

To conform is to lose your soul

It is forgivable to say nothing out of ignorance; it's inexcusable to remain silent once awareness dawns.

All broken hearts are circumstantial. Every lovelorn jerk is the victim of bad timing, good intentions, and someone else’s poor decision making.

I think it's a very bad idea for someone to start writing for a readership.

We suffered failures of imagination just like everyone else, our daring was wanting, and our daily contentment too nearly adequate for us to give it up.

It is really irritating to work with irritating people

The main questions of everyday life are too enormous to answer in any definitive sense.

I wake up every day in order to do something that's quixotic, and not necessarily called for in the world, but I do it because there's extraordinary meaning for me behind the effort.

My first job is to write a book that I believe is compelling and deserves the long sustained attention that any novel requires, and to worry about the commerce only late in the game.

Someone said that once a family producers a writer, that's the end of the family.

Want to do something noble and courageous while you're on this Earth treat the mentally ill like they have some worth.

Lands of great discoveries are also lands of great injustices.

Strangeness is an ingredient necessary in beauty.

Quiet talk is the language of love. It is the language of peace. It is the language of God.

England Their England by AG Macdonell which was written in the thirties and is about a young Scotsman who's got shell shocked during the First World War… I love it.

Cough up a lung where I'm from marcy son, aint nothin nice

Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern; one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly.

I consider myself more of a visual comedian than a physical one.

Market prices for stocks fluctuate at great amplitudes around intrinsic value but, over the long term, intrinsic value is virtually always reflected at some point in market price.