I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

The more cats you have, the longer you live. If you have a hundred cats, you’ll live 10 times longer than if you have 10. Someday this will be discovered, and people will have a thousand cats and live forever. It’s truly ridiculous.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I often look ridiculous in Japan. There’s really no way to eat in Japan, particularly kaiseki in a traditional ryokan, without offending the Japanese horribly. Every gesture, every movement is just so atrociously wrong, and the more I try, the more hilarious it is.

Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

For a creative writer possession of the ‚truth‘ is less important than emotional sincerity.

All people are born alike – except Republicans and Democrats.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

It was that famous joke: What’s the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? ‚Hey, I wrote a song.‘

I do all my own stunts. I’m kidding.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

Husbands never become good; they merely become proficient.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury.

From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.

As long as my music is real, it’s no limit to how many ears I can grab.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people.

Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.

I’m not going to make a song just to make a song. The day that I make an album, it’s so that people really know what Bad Bunny’s about.

I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.

Sick children, if not too shy to speak, will always express this wish. They invariably prefer a story to be told to them, rather than read to them.

I got interested in reading very early, because a story was read to me, by Hans Christian Andersen, which was ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ and I don’t know if you remember ‚The Little Mermaid,‘ but it’s dreadfully sad. The little mermaid falls in love with this prince, but she cannot marry him because she is a mermaid.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.

You make ‚em, I amuse ‚em.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

If you tell a joke in the forest, but nobody laughs, was it a joke?

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

I’ve read a lot of really great characters in some really crappy stories, where I said, like, ‚Boy I could shine here, but the story sucks.‘ I don’t want to be part of that.

As I got older, my pops tried to keep me involved with the culture by telling me the stories of the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, how he came to America, and about our family back home, because all that side of my family – my aunties, grandparents – is in Africa.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

When I came into this industry, I was never afraid to be myself.

Why don’t Jews drink? It interferes with their suffering.

I don’t believe in the after life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

Comedy’s about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you’re saying.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don’t get wet you can keep.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

You know, crankiness is at the essence of all comedy.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

I’ve tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I’m afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

Stand-up is my baby.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.