I told her the world was full of nice people. I'd have hated to try to prove it to her, but I said it, anyway.

You've got forever; and somehow you can't do much with it. You've got forever; and it's a mile wide and an inch deep and full of alligators.

If we all had all we wanted to eat, we'd crap too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry.

You go into the office and take a book or two from the shelves. You read a few lines, like your life depended on reading 'em right. But you know your life doesn't depend on anything that makes sense, and you wonder where in the hell you got the idea it did; and you begin to get sore.

We're living in a funny world kid, a peculiar civilization. The police are playing crooks in it, and the crooks are doing police duty. The politicians are preachers, and the preachers are politicians. The tax collectors collect for themselves. The Bad People want us to have more dough, and the good people are fighting to keep it from us. It's not good for us, know what I mean? If we had all we wanted to eat, we'd eat too much. We'd have inflation in the toilet paper industry. That's the way I understand it. That's about the size of some of the arguments I've heard.

There are thirty-two ways to write a story, and I’ve used every one, but there is only one plot – things are not as they seem.

You can't stamp on a man's corns when he's got his feet cut off.