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.

There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him.

Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn't compete successfully with poets.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center.

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

I do not say that children at war do not die like men, if they have to die. To their everlasting honor and our everlasting shame, they do die like men, thus making possible the manly jubilation of patriotic holidays. But they are murdered children all the same.

You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages--they haven't ended yet.