What I would really like to have been, given a perfect world, is a jazz pianist. I mean jazz. I don't mean rock and roll. I mean the never-the-same-twice music the American black people gave the world.

Of course, socialism is just evil now. It's completely discredited supposedly by the collapse of the Soviet Union, but I can't help noticing that my grandchildren are heavily in hock to Communist China now which is evidently a whole lot better at business than we are.

You have never seen greatness in a Presidency; I have. It was a rich kid who you would think had every reason to be a horse's ass - Franklin Roosevelt. He was humane and wise and resourceful. He was called a traitor to his class. With George Bush, that charge would never stick.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.

The big trouble with dumb bastards is that they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart.

I just know that there are plenty of people who are in terrible trouble and can't get out. And so I'm impatient with those who think that it's easy for people to get out of trouble.