Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.

There are times, however, and this is one of them, when even being right feels wrong. What do you say, for instance, about a generation that has been taught that rain is poison and sex is death?

Any kind of political campaign that taps the kind of energy that nothing else can reach would generate a tremendous high for everybody involved in it.

When you write for a living and you can't do anything else, you know that sooner or later that the deadline is going to come screaming down on you like a goddamn banshee. There's no avoiding it...So one day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore; you shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were - the writer.

I feel the same way about disco as I do about herpes.

I guess that's one of the things about growing up in the fifties - it never occurred to me that you wouldn't be at least as successful as your parents.

Which is not really a hell of a lot to ask, Lord, because the final incredible truth is that I am not guilty. All I did was take your gibberish seriously... and you see where it got me? My primitive Christian instincts have made me a criminal.