“to leap into it and hold on, connecting everything,”

“ANGELS You might see an angel anytime and anywhere. Of course you have to open your eyes to a kind of second level, but it’s not really hard. The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads. I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance.”

“And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you finally figured out what beauty is for?

“Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity. Intellectual”

“Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.”

“But literature, the best of it, does not aim to be literature. It wants and strives, beyond that artifact part of itself, to be a true part of the composite human record—that is, not words but a reality.”

“Then I remember: death comes before the rolling away of the stone.”

“The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.”

“There are as many worlds as there are imaginers.

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."

"Some people have a way with words, and other people...oh, uh, not have way."

"I like a woman with a head on her shoulders. I hate necks."

"I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy."

"It's pain that changes our lives."

"I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they're crouching and hidden."

"Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent."

"Boy, those French! They have a different word for everything."

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture."

"Writer's block is a fancy term made up by whiners so they can have an excuse to drink alcohol."

"I believe entertainment can aspire to be art, and can become art, but if you set out to make art you're an idiot."

"You know that look that women get when they want to have sex? Me neither."

"... you're nuts but you're welcome here."

"...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart."

"We've had some fun tonight...considering we're all gonna die someday."

"I believe in equality. Equality for everybody. No matter how stupid they are or how superior I am to them."

"First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me."

"How is it possible to miss a woman whom you kept at a distance, so that when she was gone you would not miss her?"

"I've heard lots of people lie to themselves but they never fool anyone."

"She has learned that her body is precious and it mustn't be offered carelessly ever again, as it holds a direct connection to her heart."

"I gave my cat a bath the other day...they love it. He sat there, he enjoyed it, it was fun for me. The fur would stick to my tongue, but other than that..."

"The banjo is such a happy instrument--you can't play a sad song on the banjo - it always comes out so cheerful."

"I understood that as much as I had resisted the outside, as much as I had constricted my life, as much as I had closed and narrowed the channels into me, there were still many takers for the quiet heart."

"I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't."

"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper."

"Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."

"The operation was a success, but I'm afraid the doctor is dead."

"She tried to get even with him through psychological warfare but couldn't, because he didn't care."

"Comedy is the art of making people laugh without making them puke."

"You know what your problem is, it's that you haven't seen enough movies - all of life's riddles are answered in the movies." Steve Martin"

"Were they beautiful? We were all beautiful. We were in our twenties."

"Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything."

"A girl who is willing to give every ounce of herself to someone, who could never betray her lover, who never suspects maliciousness of anyone, and whose sexuality sleeps in her, waiting to be stirred."

"I have found that-- just as in real life--imagination sometimes has to stand in for experience."

"A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair."

"I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian."

"Or is it that I think too much?"

"Somewhere in the world is...The world's worst doctor and he could be yours."

"Why sip from a tea cup, when you can drink from the river."

"Hello. I'm hello, and I'd like to say myself."

"Only then does he realize what he has done to Mirabelle, how wanting a square inch of her and not all of her has damaged them both, and how he cannot justify his actions except that, well, it was life."