If you can delude yourself by believing that there is some kind of Santa Claus out there who is going to bail you out in the end, then it will help you get through. Even if you are proven wrong in the end, you would have had a better life than a non-believer.

The only thing standing between me and greatness is me.

He was so depressed, he tried to commit suicide by inhaling next to an Armenian.

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

I could turn on my radio in the morning when I was getting dressed for school and hear Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and think this is the music. Now that music is art. Ellington is art. At that time it was just what you heard on the radio. Cole Porter was just a guy who wrote pretty songs and Billie Holliday would sing them.

Reality may not be the best of all possible worlds, but it's still the only place where you can get a decent steak.

I don't respond well to mellow, you know what I mean, I have a tendency to... if I get too mellow, I ripen and then rot.