One of the more pretentious political self-descriptions is 'Libertarian.' People think it puts them above the fray. It sounds fashionable, and to the uninitiated, faintly dangerous. Actually, it's just one more bullshit political philosophy.

We [americans] are not a freedom-loving people in the beautiful, spiritual sense. We have an inspiring Constitution, but we're a hardhearted people.

I thought about how mothers feed their babies with tiny little spoons and forks so I wondered, what do Chinese mothers use? Toothpicks?

Heroin, forget it. In my neighborhood, I could see what heroin did firsthand and I was definitely afraid of that number.

Besides the drugs and counterculture, I started talking about myself, which is the first thing you do when you are a writer.

It's harder to be funny from the position of power.

To me, smoking pot meant sitting with a newspaper on my legs, rolling the seeds down, pulling the twigs out and finally producing a perfectly cylindrical, absolutely wonderful joint that you either locked at both ends or pinched off, or pinched at one end and left open at the other.