Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

I think, therefore I am, therefore I am photographable.

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.

I had made her so unhappy that she had developed a sense of humor. [-Rabo Karabekian]

I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

I thought scientists were going to find out exactly how everything worked, and then make it work better. I fully expected that by the time I was twenty-one, some scientist, maybe my brother, would have taken a color photograph of God Almighty—and sold it to Popular Mechanics magazine. Scientific truth was going to make us so happy and comfortable. What actually happened when I was twenty-one was that we dropped scientific truth on Hiroshima.

I'm so sorry - we had this cottage up in Lake Maxinkuckee, in Culver. I've thought so often of the poor Pottawattomies we took this land away from. They must have loved it so.