Yet better for one of my nature to have it that way than to have life a peaceful, placid flow of quiet contentment. I must have days of rushing excitement.

The human comedy is always tragic, but since its ingredients are always the same - dupe, fox, straight, like burlesque skits - the repetition through the ages is comedy.

Hold fast to whatever fragments of love that exist, for sometimes a mosaic is more beautiful than an unbroken pattern.

Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out.

All Americans come from Ohio originally, if only briefly.

A capacity for going overboard is a requisite for a full-grown mind.

I cannot exist without the oxygen of laughter.

I realize more and more how instinctively pessimistic I am of all human kindness -- since I am always so bowled over by it -- and am never surprised by injustice, malice or personal attack.

Joe and Jojo and I had lovely day together. I love Joe so much - more and more.

A novel is like a gland pill - it nips off the cream of my hysterics and gets them running on track in a book where they belong instead of rioting all over my person.

A writer's business is minding other people's business ... all the vices of the village gossip are the virtues of the writer.

The survival of religion is on the basis of torture and punishment

Women can do everything men can do the rest.

So every single day, I found something to be grateful for and that's a powerful lesson.

We are so busy and have become so complex, being simple is actually esoteric.

The law: it has honored us; may we honor it.

Oh, if only I did nothing simply as a result of laziness.

Kids are meeting in coffee shops and basements figuring out what's unsustainable in their communities. That's the future.

What I do for myself stays within me, what I do for others lasts a lifetime.

It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one.

When I was 17, I was so shy I could barely speak or introduce myself to anyone.