Having children is something we think we ought to do because our parents did it, but when it is over the children are just other members of the human race, rather disappointingly.

Nothing feels worse than other people's good times.

We are living in a world in which we don't give the young enough reason to live. The temper and the lyrics of a lot of punk music and so on is very, life sucks and then you die, sort of theory. I feel life is cheaper and death is more attractive now than it was when I was an adolescent, as I remember. Suicide was a personal pathology when it was committed. There was no society approval of it, like there certainly is in Palestine and some quarters of Iraq.

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't; whichever seems likelier to win an effect.

Being a famous writer is a little like being a tall dwarf. You're on the edge of normality.

How can the planet keep turning and turning and not get so bored it explodes?

To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client.