127 quotes
He looked at her with that kind of painted-on seriousness that comedians shift into when they get their chance to play Hamlet.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Society in general maintains such a vested interest in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die – or kill – than entertain change.
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Watts published a luminous book entitled The Wisdom of Insecurity that ought to be required reading for every high school senior. Watts elaborates beautifully on what I've learned from observation and personal experience: namely, that security is an illusion.
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
They'd be no threat to me. I have a black belt in Haiku. And a black vest in the cleaners.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
They were old enough to know better. Some of them were old enough to remember when old Macdonald had a farm.
Jitterbug Perfume (1984)
Well, there's one thing to be said for money. It can make you rich.
Jitterbug Perfume (1984)
"I'll follow him to the ends of the earth," she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
"Leave me in the night but please don't leave me in the dark"
Skinny Legs and All (1990)
Throughout most of our history, nothing – not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons – has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed.
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
"keep your eye on the ball, even if you cannot see the ball."
Skinny Legs and All (1990)
...the natural process of aging, which according to Dr. Wiggs Dannyboy, is so unnaturally cruel that only man could have ordained it — neither nature nor God would stoop so low.
Jitterbug Perfume (1984)
So this, then, is the chamber of the hootchy-kootch. Its bathtub full of orchids. Its closet full of smoke.
Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994)
Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
"In the end, we should simply imagine a joke; a long joke that's being continually retold in an accent too thick and too strange to ever be completely understood. Life is that joke. The soul is its punchline."
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
To pragmatists, the letter Z is nothing more than a phonetically symbolic glyph, a minor sign easily learned, readily assimilated, and occasionally deployed in the course of a literate life. To cynics, Z is just an S with a stick up its butt.
Wild Ducks Flying Backward (2005)
It's not men who limit women, it's not straights who limit gays, it's not whites who limit blacks. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Moreover, given the unpleasant option of having to associate with either the self-satisfied beautiful or the self-pitying plain, he'd choose the former every time because beauty could sometimes transcend smugness whereas self-pity just made ugliness all the more unattractive.
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
...to emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.
Skinny Legs and All (1990)
They glared at her the way any intelligent persons ought to glare when what they need is a smoke, a bite, a cup of coffee, a piece of ass, or a good fast-paced story, and all they're getting is philosophy.
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Zippers are primal and modern at the very same time. On the one hand, your zipper is primitive and reptilian, on the other, mechanical and slick. A zipper is where the Industrial Revolution meets the Cobra Cult.
Jitterbug Perfume (1984)