One thing I learned, with permission of the school committee of Indianapolis, was that when a tyrant or a government gets in trouble it wonders what to do. Declare war! Then nothing else matters. It’s like chess; when in doubt, castle.
How nice – to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.
The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal.
About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.
What everybody is well advised to do is to not write about your own life, this is if you want to write fast. You will be writing about your own life anyway but you won’t know it.
It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead.
Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.
We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap.
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.
It’s perfectly ordinary to be a socialist. It’s perfectly normal to be in favor of fire departments.
If people think nature is their friend, then they sure don’t need an enemy.
One good thing about TV is, if you die violently, God forbid, on camera, you will not have died in vain because you will be great entertainment.
I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.
The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.
In an unmoored life like mine, sleep and hunger and work arrange themselves to suit themselves, without consulting me.
Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile.
I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.
There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.
When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.
To practice any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it.