Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.

But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.

He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.

To hell with facts! We need stories!

That ain't me, that ain't my face. It wasn't even me when I was trying to be that face. I wasn't even really me them; I was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted.

What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.

The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon

They can't tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.

Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.

Rules? PISS ON YOUR FUCKING RULES!

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?

Good writin' ain't necessarily good readin'.

What makes people so impatient is what I can't figure; all the guy had to do was wait.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself

But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.

I don't think you fully understand the public, my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way.

I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

He's the sort of guy that gets a laugh out of people.

He who walks out of step hears another drum.

He knows that there's no better way in the world to aggravate somebody who's trying to make it hard for you than by acting like you're not bothered.

To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs ...

He knew you can't really be strong until you can see a funny side of things.

We can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.

The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that might be real funny if it weren't for the cartoon figures being real guys...

But I tried though," he says. "Goddammit, I sure as hell did that much, now, didn't I?

More was revealed in a human face than a human being can bear face to face.

The world news might not be therapeutic.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another.

But at least I tried

The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.

They wouldn't be so cocky if they knew what me and the moon have going.

The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.

To hell with that. A man goin' fishing with two whores from Portland don't have to take that crap.

Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

Ocean, Ocean I'll beat you in the end.

Then the trembling starts to get worse. This must be how they begin, he thinks. Freak-outs. Breakdowns. Crack-ups. Eventually shut-ins and finally cross-offs. But first the cover-up . . .

It's the truth, even if it didn't happen... ...if they don't exist, how can a man see them?

I been away a long time.

You're making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You're not crazy the way they think. Yes...I see...