Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.

This is what I find encouraging about the writing trades: ... They allow lunatics to seem saner than sane.

We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

I learned how to make jokes because I wanted to give people as much fun as they did, and I guess I did, too.

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.

in nonsense is strength