The subculture of felons is in great vogue among adolescents. Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and so forth allow us Republicans to say to America's young people, 'We be thugs.' The GOP may capture the youth vote at last.

A humorist doesn't really do that much note-taking.

Satire doesn't effect change.

No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.

I write because I like to make things and the only things I am good at making things with are words.

I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had... maybe I could even quit renting.

People are always angry at America. They're absolutely certain that America either caused their problems or is deliberately not fixing their problems. But the anger is always directed at America and never at Americans.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.

Fortunately, I'm married to someone who's a pretty excellent parent!

I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements.

Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I'm not even sure we can draw lessons from them.

You don't despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.

Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment.

I like to have interesting things to write about. And when one says something is 'interesting,' one almost always means 'bad.'

I believe in God. God created the world.

If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.

Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.

I was never a Democrat. I went from Republican to Maoist and then back again.

Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let's hope so.

Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues.

We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup holders. Most of it has to do with urban sprawl. What began as pleasure ends up in necessity, as so many things do.

There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe but nonetheless is important to have and dreadful not to have.

The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the '70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.

We've come into the world of '1984,' but it turns out to be '1984'-Lite.

I think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics.

College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions.

It's hard to be serious in life.

People love to be told what they know already.

A Kindle returns us to the inconvenience of the scroll, except with batteries and electronic glitches. It's as handy as bringing Homer along to recite the 'Iliad' while playing a lyre.

America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God.

Kids are disorganized.

Politics is the one field you don't age out of.

The Tea Party has definitely increased political involvement, not only among Tea Party members but among people who oppose the Tea Party members. It's been a general stimulus.

There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.

All business is capitalistic. You require capital for any sort of business endeavour.

I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.

I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true.

When I board an airplane these days, all the middle-aged men are dressed like me - when I was an 8-year-old. They're in shorts and T-shirts. And it's not just on airplanes. It's in business offices, teachers' lounges, and churches.

On inspection, Gaudi's architecture isn't whimsical at all.

Disney's House of the Future had the clean simplicity prized in the 1950s as relief from decades of frayed patchwork, jury-rigging, and make-do clutter caused by Depression and war.

More modern poetry is written than read.

In thirteen years, every aspect of the universe can change - ask a thirteen-year-old.

Moviemakers are rewarded with tax write-offs if, when seeking a location that looks like America, they seek it in America.

When the government runs out of lenders, it can do something that households are forbidden to do: print money.

I'm fascinated by political enthusiasm.

I myself am a parent in a small business. Number of employees: one.

Is Bill Clinton so good at politics, or are other politicians so bad?

Some people think that welfare reform should have hurt Bill Clinton with black voters.

America gives every appearance of being a nation besotted with trashiness - divorce, illegitimacy, casual Fridays.