I don't know what anybody else in the world would want to thank America for, but man, it [jazz] works. What I like about it - and what public health people ought to like about it - it's safe sex.

You can't fight progress. The best you can do is ignore it, until it finally takes your livelihood and self-respect away.

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

Human beings are about 1,000 times dumber and meaner than they think they are.

All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.

There is no good reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.

But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.