I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect the ones I do occasionally use tend to hang around in people’s memories for a while.

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

It’s a very good question, very direct, and I’m not going to answer it.

For me, it’s a purity thing about the joke itself. It’s a test of a joke whether or not you do it completely clean and it works. If it does, then that’s a legitimate item you have there. For me, it’s nothing to do with finding those words offensive. It’s just not what I’m in search of. Do it clean, and you are really earning that laugh.

I’ll never make it, it will never happen, because they’re never going to hear me ‚cause they’re screaming all the time.

The mark of a true politician is that he is never at a loss for words because he is always half-expecting to be asked to make a speech.

Hell is full of musical amateurs.

At Facebook, we build tools to help people connect with the people they want and share what they want, and by doing this we are extending people’s capacity to build and maintain relationships.

The French complain of everything, and always.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.

A letter does not blush.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

OK, so what’s the speed of dark?

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

I think we basically saw that the messaging space is bigger than we’d initially realized, and that the use cases that WhatsApp and Messenger have are more different than we had thought originally.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

Never injure a friend, even in jest.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

I’ve got a great sense of humor.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

If you are not allowed to laugh in heaven, I don’t want to go there.

Sweet is the memory of past troubles.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that’s what you’re looking for, go live with a car battery.

Coffee is a language in itself.

What can I say? I’m a talker.

One must steer, not talk.

Journalism largely consists of saying ‚Lord Jones is Dead‘ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.

Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren’t the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

In the normal flow of a conversation, our attention is divided. We hear parts of what other people are saying, in order to follow and keep the conversation going. At the same time, we’re planning what we’ll say next, some exciting story of our own.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

Whenever I want to laugh, I read a wonderful book, ‚Children’s Letters to God.‘ You can open it anywhere. One I read recently said, ‚Dear God, thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy.‘

I won’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

Obama’s not Jesus. He can’t walk on water.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

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

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.