264 quotes
profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.
Hocus Pocus (1990)
Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don't you wish you could have something named after you?
I Love You, Madame Librarian (2004)
It goes against the American storytelling grain to have someone in a situation he can't get out of, but I think this is very usual in life.
Playboy interview (1973)
The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front."
Hocus Pocus (1990)
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.
Palm Sunday (1981)
Human beings will be happier — not when they cure cancer or get to Mars or eliminate racial prejudice or flush Lake Erie — but when they find ways to inhabit primitive communities again. That's my utopia.
Playboy interview (1973)
She was an alcoholic. I didn't blame myself for that. The worst problem in the life of any alcoholic is alcohol.
Hocus Pocus (1990)
You know, the truth can be really powerful stuff. You're not expecting it.
A Man Without a Country (2005)
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.
Cold Turkey (2004)
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
Cold Turkey (2004)
You know, in a way I wish I hadn't met you two. It's much more convenient to think of the opposition as a nice homogeneous, dead-wrong mass. Now I've got to muddy my thinking with exceptions.
Player Piano (1952)
In order to get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people out of what was the most important thing on earth to them — the feeling of being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect.
Player Piano (1952)
"This husband of yours, he'd rather have his wife a— Rather, have her—" Halyard cleared his throat— "than go into public relations?"
"I'm proud to say," said the girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect left."
Player Piano (1952)
"You go up to a man, and you say, 'How are things going, Joe?' And he says, 'Oh fine, fine—couldn't be better.' And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much."
The Sirens of Titan (1959)
We are about to be attacked by Al Qaeda. Wave flags if you have them. That always seems to scare them away. I'm kidding.
A Man Without a Country (2005)
I have this theory about why men kill each other and break things. … Never mind. It's a dumb theory. I was going to say it was all sexual … but everything is sexual … but alcohol.
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Why throw money at problems? That's what money is for.
Should the nation's wealth be redistributed? It has been and continues to be redistributed to a few people in a manner strikingly unhelpful.
Timequake (1997)
I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.
All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber.
There was not a country in the world that had not fought a battle in the war of all Earth against the invaders from Mars.
All was forgiven.
All living things were brothers, and all dead things were even more so.
The Sirens of Titan (1959)