Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.

A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap.

It seems to me that the most universal revolutionary wish now or ever is a wish for heaven, a wish by a human being to be honored by angels for something other than beauty or usefulness.

That's what my books are, now that I'm a grownup - mosaics of jokes.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

A lack of seriousness has led to all sorts of wonderful insights.

It pains me even now, even a million years later, to write about such human misbehaviour. A million years later, I feel like apologizing for the human race. That’s all I can say.