I’m looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.

I’ve never been a very prolific person, so when creativity flows, it flows. I find myself scribbling on little notepads and pieces of loose paper, which results in a very small portion of my writings to ever show up in true form.

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

Humor is reason gone mad.

If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

It’s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?

Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.

I liked to write from the time I was about 12 or 13. I loved to read. And since I only spoke to my brother, I would write down my thoughts. And I think I wrote some of the worst poetry west of the Rockies. But by the time I was in my 20s, I found myself writing little essays and more poetry – writing at writing.

That’s the one for my tombstone… Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

The most important thing is to read as much as you can, like I did. It will give you an understanding of what makes good writing and it will enlarge your vocabulary.

Although I write screenplays, I don’t think I’m a very good writer.

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It’s to see my dividends coming in.

Of course, there are those critics – New York critics as a rule – who say, ‚Well, Maya Angelou has a new book out and of course it’s good but then she’s a natural writer.‘ Those are the ones I want to grab by the throat and wrestle to the floor because it takes me forever to get it to sing. I work at the language.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up a pen to write.

I’m comfortable in my own skin, no matter how far it’s stretched. Ha ha.

I’m odd looking. Sometimes I think I look like a funny muppet.

I’ve always appreciated a turn of phrase.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

I’ve always had to conquer fear when I’m on stage. Basically, I was and still am a very shy person. It’s absolutely in conflict with what I do. But once I deliver the first joke I’m okay. It’s like I’m out there all by myself just delivering my lines to nobody in particular without ever trying to notice the audience in front of me.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

There’s no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

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.‘

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

I like sitting and writing with my buddies.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

If you were going to shoot a mime, would you use a silencer?

There’s one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says, ‚Yes,‘ you know he is a crook.

I only type every third night. I have no plan. My mind is a blank. I sit down. The typewriter gives me things I don’t even know I’m working on. It’s a free lunch. A free dinner. I don’t know how long it is going to continue, but so far there is nothing easier than writing.

All through my writing life, I’ve had this impulse to write autobiographical works.

It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it.

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

I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.

Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales.

The right honourable gentleman caught the Whigs bathing, and walked away with their clothes. He has left them in the full enjoyment of their liberal positions, and he is himself a strict conservative of their garments.

I’m most suspicious of scripts that have a lot of stage direction at the top of the page… sunrise over the desert and masses of… a whole essay before you get to the dialogue.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

I don’t think about who the audience is for my books.

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Why do Jewish men die before their wives? They want to.

A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

I wanted to write.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

George Orwell is half journalist, half fiction writer. I’m 100 percent fiction writer… I don’t want to write messages. I want to write good stories. I think of myself as a political person, but I don’t state my political messages to anybody.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

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

If my businesses or my investments are not profitable, then I don’t eat. And I like to eat.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.