in California death is one of the most successfully kept secrets there is. If you doubt this, try to find a cemetery.

There is no irritant as painful as an ace up your sleeve that you can never use; it's the kind of thing that causes oysters to produce pearls.

Life is like a great jazz riff. You sense the end the very moment you were wanting it to go on forever.

The moon develops the imagination, as chemicals develop photographic images.

Ghetto humor is the social twin of fantasy; together they sustain the powerless, who accomplish miracles through illusion.

Californians are good at planning for the earthquake, while simultaneously denying it will happen.

I can’t wait fifteen years to do my work: Because my ideas are coming now.