Never underestimate how much assistance, how much satisfaction, how much comfort, how much soul and transcendence there might be in a well-made taco and a cold bottle of beer.

People write memoirs because they lack the imagination to make things up.

The harsh truth is, most red-haired men look like blondes who've spoiled from lack of refrigeration. They look like brown-haired men who've been composted out behind the barn. Yet that same pigmentation that on a man can resemble leaf mold or junkyard rust, a woman wears like a tiara of rubies.

Kissing is man's greatest invention. All animals copulate, but only humans kiss.

The pervasive brutality in current fiction - the death, disease, dysfunction, depression, dismemberment, drug addiction, dementia, and dreary little dramas of domestic discord - is an obvious example of how language in exploitative, cynical or simply neurotic hands can add to the weariness, the darkness in the world.

Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek.