The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.

If you live in America, you don't have to work. You can just drift along in the smiling and nodding racket.

Vice is its own reward.

Well, it has done terrifying things. Religious ideas are inflammatory in a way that I find difficult to understand. There are very few wars over the theory of relativity. Very few heated arguments, for that matter. Whereas, in Northern Ireland, they are killing one another over religion.

Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.

As soon as a person takes a part as a homosexual, the press says, "What do your wife and children think of this?" And the actor never says, "Well, last week I was a murderer, and the week before that I was a child molester, and the week before that I was a lunatic. But now I'm a homosexual."

The trouble with children is that they're not returnable.