A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

I think when I'm 80 years old, 85, hopefully, I'll be pushed around in a wheelchair by a red-headed nurse with panty outline. She'll make me little tequila sunrises and I'll read my complete works then. Then, I'll decide whether I think I've done something good or not. I'll reserve my judgment until then.

If kissing is man's greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man's worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster civilization and lead Western humanity to its present state of decline.

Summer had come to sit on New York's face.

Never be afraid to make a fool of yourself. The furthest out you can go is the best place to be.

My personal motto has always been: Joy in spite of everything. Not just [mindless] joy, but joy in spite of everything. Recognizing the inequities and the suffering and the corruption and all that but refusing to let it rain on my parade. And I advocate this to other people.

Unfortunately, little darlings, there is no such thing as a simple love story.The most transitory puppy crush is complex to the extent of lying beyond the far reaches of the brain's understanding.