The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

One thing in the Middlewest: If you're in my business you're aware of the low opinion both coasts have of the midlands. And that is quite mistaken. New York would be a Kokomo if it weren't for Middlewesterners coming there.

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

The biggest laughs are based on the biggest disappointments and the biggest fears.

Literature is the only art in which the audience performs the score.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.