Educate yourself, welcome life's messiness, read Chekhov, avoid becoming an architect at all costs.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

Earthlings are the great explainers, explaining why this event is structured as it is, telling how other events may be achieved or avoided.

A lot of critics think I'm stupid because my sentences are so simple and my method is so direct: they think these are defects. No. The point is to write as much as you know as quickly as possible.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.