Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the universe.

There’s only one me, and I’m stuck with him.

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it’s a very poor scheme for survival.

He was talking about the sign that said ‘THE COMPLICATED FUTILITY OF IGNORANCE.”All knew was that I didn’t want my daughter or anybody’s child to see a message that negative every time she comes into the library,’ he said. ‘And then I found out it was you who was responsible for it.”What’s so negative about...

Do you realize that all great literature — “Moby Dick,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Red Badge of Courage,” “The Iliad and The Odyssey,” “Crime and Punishment,” the Bible, and “The Charge of the Light Brigade” — are all about what a bummer it is to be a …human being?

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;Man got to sit and wonder ‘why, why, why?’Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;Man got to tell himself he understand.

How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

As for literary criticism in general: I have long felt that any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel or a play or a poem is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae or a banana split.

When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth.

The Fourteenth Book is entitled, “What can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” It doesn’t take long to read The Fourteenth Book. It consists of one word and a period. This is it: “Nothing.

It appeared to the Elders that the people here would believe anything about themselves, no matter how preposterous, as long as it was flattering. To make sure of this, they performed an experiment. They put the idea into Earthlings’ heads that the whole Universe had been created by one big animal who looked just like...

Perhaps some people really are born unhappy. I surely hope not. Speaking for my sister and myself: We were born with the capacity and determination to be utterly happy all the time. Perhaps even in this we were freaks. Hi ho.

Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of course, because if there are 2 things people at the...

I speak gibberish to the civilized world and it replies in kind.

The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.

No wonder kids grow up crazy. A cat’s cradle is nothing but a bunch of X’s between somebody’s hands, and little kids look and look and look at all those X’s . . .””And?””No damn cat, and no damn cradle.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.

I realize that some of you may have come in hopes of hearing tips on how tobecome a professional writer. I say to you, “If you really want to hurt yourparents, and you don’t have the nerve to be a homosexual, the least you cando is go into the arts. But do not use semicolons....

I wanted all thingsTo seem to make some sense,So we could all be happy, yes,Instead of tense.And I made up liesSo that they all fit nice,And I made this sad worldA par-a-dise.

I think I succeeded as a writer because I did not come out of an English department. I used to write in the chemistry department. And I wrote some good stuff. If I had been in the English department, the prof would have looked at my short stories, congratulated me on my talent, and then...

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

I believe that reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found. By reading the writings of the most interesting minds in history, we meditate with our own minds and theirs as well. This to me is a miracle.

You cannot be a good writer of serious fiction if you are not depressed.

We went to the New York World’s Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine...

This much I knew and know: I was making myself hideously uncomfortable by not narrowing my attention to details of life which were immediately important, and by refusing to believe what my neighbors believed.

I can think of another quickie education for a child, which, in its way, is almost as salutary: Meeting a human being who is tremendously respected by the adult world, and realizing that that person is actually a malicious lunatic.

To the guards who walked up and down outside, each car became a single organism which ate and drank and excreted through its ventilators. It talked or sometimes yelled through its ventilators, too. In went water and loaves of blackbread and sausage and cheese, and out came shit and piss and language.

You’re the man who stands on the street corner with a roll of toilet paper, and written on each square are the words, ‘I love you.’ And each passer-by, no matter who, gets a square all his or her own. I don’t want my square of toilet paper.’I didn’t realize it was toilet paper.

Jonah-John-if I had been a Sam, I would have been a Jonah still-not because I have been unlucky for others, but because somebody or something has compelled me to be certain places, at certain times, without fail. Conveyances and motives, both conventional and bizarre, have been provided. And, according to plan, at each appointed second,...

Money began talking to Ben again–not big money this time, but little money. It niggled and nagged and carped and whined at him, as full of fears and bitterness as a spinster witch.–“Money Talks

People who sell bolts and nuts and locomotives and frozen orange juice make billions, while the people who struggle to bring a little beauty into the world, give life a little meaning, they starve.–“$10,000 A Year, Easy

Somebody will beat both [contents and price] sooner or later because that is good old Free Enterprise, where the consumer benefits from battles between jolly green giants.

We’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive. It’s pretty dense kids who haven’t figured that out by the time they’re ten…. Most kids can’t afford to go to Harvard and be misinformed.

I concluded that the best thing for me and for those around me was to want nothing, to be enthusiastic about nothing, to be as unmotivated as possible, in fact, so that I would never again hurt anyone.

I don’t know about you, but I practice a disorganized religion. I belong to an unholy disorder. We call ourselves “Our Lady of the Perpetual Astonishment

I am eternally grateful for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

Painters–and storytellers, including poets and playwrights and historians, they are the justices of the Supreme Court of Good and Evil, of which I am now a member, and to which you may belong someday!

The Money River, where the wealth of the nation flows. We were born on the banks of it-and so were most of the mediocre people we grew up with, went to private schools with, sailed and played tennis with. We can slurp from that mighty river to our hearts’ content. And we can even take...

There is a tragic flaw in our precious constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious & charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful.

After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’ And do you know what Father said? He said, ‘What is sin?

and I’m whistling as beautifully as I can.

I really wonder what gives us the right to wreck this poor planet of ours.

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

Be patient, Ophelia.Love,Hamlet

What is the secret of life?’ I asked.‘I forget,’ said Sandra.‘Protein,’ the bartender declared. ‘They found something out about protein.‘‘Yeah,’ said Sandra, ‘that’s it.

How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

Sometimes Alton Darwin would talk to me about the planet he was on before he was transported in a steel box to Athena. ‘Drugs were food,’ he said. ‘I was in the food business. Just because people on one planet eat a certain kind of food they’re hungry for, that makes them feel better after...

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that’s the soul seeking some relief.