"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center."

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC"

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

"And so it goes..."

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."

"And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep."

"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, "It might have been."

"How nice -- to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive."

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

"The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."

"Dear future generations: Please accept our apologies. We were rolling drunk on petroleum."

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward."

"Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead."

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand."

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest."

"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?"

"The practice of art isn't to make a living. It's to make your soul grow."