"I think the United States and the secretary of State should be concerned about the poverty in this country - people without health insurance. The United States should stop being the empire and be concerned about other countries. You've got to be more worried about your own people."

"Venezuela, with Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, is a full member of Mercosur. And many other Latin American countries, CARICOM, Bolivia have expressed their support for Venezuela. The Arab League, the full Arab League has voiced its support."

"There's been an open attack by the U.S. government, an immoral attack, to try and prevent Venezuela from being freely elected to a post in the Security Council. The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists."

"The U.S. only has 20 billion barrels of oil in reserve. It seems as though there is no more oil around. Venezuela has 300 billion barrels of oil in reserves. Iraq has, like, 150 billion barrels of oil. Iran, close to 300 billion barrels of reserve. Oil for 200 years, of course."

"Fidel is a Marxist-Leninist. I am not. Fidel is an atheist. I am not. One day, we discussed God and Christ. I told Castro, I am a Christian. I believe in the Social Gospels of Christ. He doesn't. Just doesn't. More than once, Castro told me that Venezuela is not Cuba, and we are not in the 1960s."

"What a thing, Europe. Europe! The cultured Europe! We are the barbarians, the Indians, the blacks, the southerners. How cynical is Europe. Chavez the tyrant! Chavez the strongman! Chavez, who wants to stay forever. While there, they have kings, my friend!"

"The president of the United States of North America, George W. Bush, the little gentleman of the North, the political cadaver that is visiting South America, that little gentleman is the president of all the history of the United States, and in the history of the United States, he has the lowest level of approval in his own country."

"Simon Bolivar, when history led him - and as Karl Marx said, men can make history, but only as far as history allows us to do so - when history took Bolivar and made him the leader of the independence process in Venezuela, he made that process revolutionary."

"Simon Bolivar turned over all of his land. He freed all of his slaves, and he turned them into soldiers, and he brought them here. He brought them to Peru and Carabobo, and he worked together with the troops of San Martin to liberate this continent. That is Simon Bolivar."

"The government of the United States doesn't want peace. It wants to exploit its system of exploitation, of pillage, of hegemony through war. It wants peace, but what's happening in Iraq? What happened in Lebanon? Palestine? What's happening? What's happened over the last hundred years in Latin America and in the world?"

"I'm a man with many defects. I love. I sing. I dream. I was born in the poor countryside. I was raised in the countryside, planting corn and selling sweets made by my grandmother. My children, my two daughters are with me and I want a better world for my grandchildren, for your grandchildren."

"I don't care about the internal political system of the United States. I want to be a friend of United States, of its baseball, its institutions, its rock and roll, its workers, and its technology because we need it. I want to be friends of the Arab people, of the Persian people, of the Asian people."

"A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance."

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

"So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?"

"Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex."

"Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."

"The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."

"Some may never live, but the crazy never die."

"If you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up."

"Too weird to live, too rare to die!"

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional."

"It never got weird enough for me."

"In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."

"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours."

"I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing."

"We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws."

"Good people drink good beer."

"We can't stop here, this is bat country!"

"All my life, my heart has sought a thing I cannot name. Remembered line from a long- forgotten poem"

"Freedom is something that dies unless it's used."

"Yesterday's weirdness is tomorrow's reason why."

"It was obvious that he was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear."

"America...just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable"

"Weird behavior is natural in smart children, like curiosity is to a kitten."

"You better take care of me Lord, if you don't you're gonna have me on your hands."

"Walk tall, kick ass, learn to speak Arabic, love music and never forget you come from a long line of truth seekers, lovers and warriors."

"The greatest mania of all is passion: and I am a natural slave to passion: the balance between my brain and my soul and my body is as wild and delicate as the skin of a Ming vase."

"For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled."

"I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes."

"It was one of those fine little love stories that can make you smile in your sleep at night."

"Anything worth doing, is worth doing right."

"With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree."

"Buy the ticket, take the ride."

"It gave me a strange feeling, and the rest of that night I didn’t say much, but merely sat there and drank, trying to decide if I was getting older and wiser, or just plain old."

"I have no taste for either poverty or honest labor, so writing is the only recourse left for me."

"I've always considered writing the most hateful kind of work. I suspect it's a bit like fucking, which is only fun for amateurs. Old whores don't do much giggling."

"A word to the wise is infuriating."

"On my tombstone they will carve, "IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME."

"It was like falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool full of mermaids."