Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.
There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.
It’s a terrible waste to be happy and not notice it.
Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
If you want to break the rules of grammar, first learn the rules of grammar.
The only difference between Hitler and Bush is that Hitler was elected.
Plato, by the way, wanted to banish all poets from his proposed Utopia because they were liars. The truth was that Plato knew philosophers couldn’t compete successfully with poets.
The artist makes his living by pretending, by putting it in a meaningful hole though no such holes exist.
I was raised by a black maid by the name of Ida Young and I probably talked to her more than anybody, so whatever is nutty about me was nutty about her, too, I think because I saw a lot more of her than I did of my parents.
Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad.
People hate it when they’re tickled because laughter is not pleasant, if it goes on too long. I think it’s a desperate sort of convulsion in desperate circumstances, which helps a little.
You develop a style from writing a lot.
My God, the religious right will not acknowledge what a merciful person Jesus was.
I was clasified as a ‘Science Fiction’ writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady.
I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that’s not saying much.
A lack of seriousness has led to all sorts of wonderful insights.
Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.
Beer, of course, is actually a depressant, but poor people will never stop hoping otherwise.
History is merely a list of surprises. It can only prepare us to be surprised yet again.