Maybe that's why God made us kids first and built us close to the ground, because He knows you got to fall down a lot and bleed a lot before you learn that one simple lesson. You pay for what you get, you own what you pay for... and sooner or later whatever you own comes back home to you.

Shall there be truth between us, as two men? Not as friends, but as enemies and equals?

Did it [cocaine] for about eight years. Not a terribly long time to be an addict I guess, but it is longer than World War II.

If life teaches anything at all it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes that there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question.

I just write about what I feel I want to write about. I'm like a kid. I get an idea, and it's like a kid's toy that you push and tug around the room. It's fun, it's bright, it's pretty and maybe it'll go clack-clack or whiz-whiz, whatever it happens to do. I like to make believe.

May be she’ll learn something about what death really is, which is where the pain stops and the good memories begin. Not the end of life but the end of pain.

There is a relationship between humor and fear. Think of all the gags you ever heard that have to do with dismemberment, or something that's horrible in one way or another, even if it's just horrible in the sense that somebody's being embarrassed. What do kids laugh at? Kids laugh if your fly's down. That's hilarious. But for the kid whose fly is down, it's a horrible situation.