When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death

Self-esteem is for sissies. Accept that you're a pimple and try to keep a lively sense of humor about it. That way lies grace - and maybe even glory.

Using words to describe magic is like using a screwdriver to cut roast beef.

The sky was the color of Edgar Allan Poe's pajamas.

Let us, rather, gather facts, all the facts, regardless of aesthetic appeal or theoretical social worth, and spread those facts before us not as the soothsayer spreads the innards of a turkey but as a newspaper spreads its columns. Let us be journalists, then. And like all good journalists, we shall present our facts in an order that will satisfy the famous five W's: wow, whoopee, wahoo, why-not and whew.

Genius may stand on the shoulders of giants, but it stands alone.

I want to travel on a train that smells like snowflakes. I want to sip in cafes that smell like comets. Under the pressure of my step, I want the streets to emit the precise odor of a diamond necklace. I want the newspapers I read to smell like the violins left in pawnshops by weeping hobos on Christmas Eve. I want to carry luggage that reeks of the neurons in Einstein's brain. I want a city's gases to smell like the golden belly hairs of the gods. And when I gaze at a televised picture of the moon, I want to detect, from a distance of 239,000 miles, the aroma of fresh mozzarella.