When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.

The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads. Laughter, praise, honors, money, and the love of beautiful girls will be your only reward.

A rancher is a farmer who farms the public lands with a herd of four-legged lawn mowers.

If you're never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You've only missed out on one half of life.

Nobody seems more obsessed by diet than our antimaterialist, otherworldly, New Age, spiritual types. But if the material world is merely illusion, an honest guru should as content with Budweiser and bratwurst as with raw carrot juice, tofu, and seaweed slime.

I've never yet read a review of one of my own books that I couldn't have written much better myself.

It is not death or dying that is tragic, but rather to have existed without fully participating in life- that is the deepest personal tragedy.