I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

The culture of the United States has flooded the world. It's the inevitable result of a powerful culture, art. We've got an instinctive touch when it comes to the popular mind because we've had no aristocracy. It is a democratic country. And we know without knowing it, without bothering to understand it, how to reach ordinary people, sometimes with the most vulgar, worthless junk on the face of the earth, but we know how to do it [laughter].

Down deep in His heart God is a comedian who loves to make us laugh.

Oh,Elizabeth, your justice would freeze beer.

The need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star.

I speak my own sins; I cannot judge another. I have no tongue for it.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism.