Just because you can read, write and do a little math, doesn't mean that you're entitled to conquer the universe.

If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke? All the great story lines are great practical jokes that people fall for over and over again.

I would have been dead if it weren't for that great gift to civilization from the Chemistry Department of Harvard, which was napalm, or sticky jellied gasoline.

The things other people have put into my head, at any rate, do not fit together nicely, are often useless and ugly, are out of proportion with one another, are out of proportion with life as it really is outside my head.

He didn't look like a soldier at all. He looked like a filthy flamingo.

Every writer has to write his speech.

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