"Many people need desperately to receive this message: 'I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone."

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."

"The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected."

"I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone."

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?"

"I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all."

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything."

"Science is magic that works."

"All this happened, more or less."

"A sane person to an insane society must appear insane."

"If you can do no good, at least do no harm."

"When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth."

"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."

"Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber."

"There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time."

"Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile."

"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before."

"All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist."

"If somebody says 'I love you' to me, I feel as though I had a pistol pointed at my head. What can anybody reply under such conditions but that which the pistol holder requires? 'I love you, too'."

"Do you realize that all great literature is all about what a bummer it is to be a human being? Isn't it such a relief to have somebody say that?"

"And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you."

"I wanted all things To seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, Instead of tense. And I made up lies So that they all fit nice, And I made this sad world A par-a-dise."

"I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'."

"I am a humanist, which means, in part, that I have tried to behave decently without expectations of rewards or punishments after I am dead."

"Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy."

"That's one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times and concentrate on the good ones."

"Wake up, you idiots! Whatever made you think that money was so valuable?"

"I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer." "What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?"

"You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too. And you've got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food."

"There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look."

"No good at life, but very funny sometimes with the commentary."

"I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on."

"People have to talk about something just to keep their voice boxes in working order so they'll have good voice boxes in case there's ever anything really meaningful to say."

"Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe."

"We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should."

"She was a dull person, but a sensational invitation to make babies."

"We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane."

"All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me."

"We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap."

"If your brains were dynamite there wouldn't be enough to blow your hat off."

"People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore".""

"It is just an illusion here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever."

"Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier."

"I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living."

"No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful."

"There are too many of us and we are all too far apart."

"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance."

"Maturity...is knowing what your limitations are...Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."

"Ting-a-ling mother fucker."