In the end, perhaps we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's continually retold in an accent too thick and strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke my friends. The soul is the punch line.

Growing up is a trap," snapped Dr. Robbins. "When they tell you to shut up, they mean stop talking. When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing. Reach a nice level plateau and settle there, predictable and unchanging, no longer a threat.

In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. In nonfiction, you don't have that luxury.

Sometimes one gets the feeling that life still thinks it's living in Paris in the '30s.

Western civilization was declining too fast for comfort, but too slowly to be very exciting.

To live fully, one must be free, but to be free one must give up security. Therefore, to live one must be ready to die. How's that for a paradox?

Wit and playfulness represent a desperately serious transcendence of evil. Humor is both a form of wisdom and a means of survival.