My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.

Night and gin and music-the right setting for peeling off the thin clinging layers of bullshit and finding one's way down closer to the essential self.

A nonreader is somebody standing there in a blindfold.

The only thing that prisons demonstrably cure is heterosexuality.

You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet.

I am not suited to the role of going around selling the life-can-be-beautiful idea. It can be, indeed. But you don't buy the concept from your friendly door-to-door lecture salesman.

It's no good telling somebody they're trying too hard. It's very much like ordering a child to go stand in a corner for a half hour and never once think about elephants.