Цитаты из книги A Man Without a Country

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

There is no reason good can't triumph over evil, if only angels will get organized along the lines of the mafia.

Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.

‘Welcome to Earth, young man,’ I said. 'It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Joe, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of: Goddamn it, Joe, you’ve got to be kind!’

By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?

We humanists try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.

My father said, "When in doubt, castle."

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

The truth is, we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.

Humor is an almost physiological response to fear.

So either go on practicing safe sex or emigrate.

If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph: THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC