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.

As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.

I write in order to attain that feeling of tension relieved and function achieved which a cow enjoys on giving milk.

That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?

Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.

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

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

Since the very beginning, Emeril’s had a sense of humor about me calling him names and poking fun at him.

The worst way of flying, I think, is standby. It never works. That’s why they call it standby. You end up standing there going, ‚Bye!‘

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

You know what, I’m very attracted to someone who makes me laugh and is that charming. Really, I could be charmed by anyone. I’m just a sucker for somebody that is charming.

To take a few nouns, and a few pronouns, and adverbs and adjectives, and put them together, ball them up, and throw them against the wall to make them bounce. That’s what Norman Mailer did. That’s what James Baldwin did, and Joan Didion did, and that’s what I do – that’s what I mean to do.

The foolish and wicked practice of profane cursing and swearing is a vice so mean and low that every person of sense and character detests and despises it.

Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.

When the burdens of the presidency seem unusually heavy, I always remind myself it could be worse. I could be a mayor.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That’s what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big joke on me.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.

A two-year-old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.

I’ve got a great sense of humor.

I was the first woman to burn my bra – it took the fire department four days to put it out.

I just feel that ‚The Color Purple,‘ which was my 10th book, was a true gift from my ancestors.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

The only time my prayers are never answered is on the golf course.

People are more aware now of cities and of different ways of life. I suppose the writing I do is a bit in the past, and I’m not sure it’s the kind of writing I would do if I were starting now.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

I’m always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don’t even take what I am seriously.

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

I have often wanted to drown my troubles, but I can’t get my wife to go swimming.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

If at first you don’t succeed… so much for skydiving.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

A poet never takes notes. You never take notes in a love affair.

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

I wrote a few children’s books… not on purpose.

What, sir, would the people of the earth be without woman? They would be scarce, sir, almighty scarce.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

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

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

Writing is fun – at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That’s easy to manage.

Believe it or not, I make myself laugh. Sometimes when I have thoughts or say some things that are funny, it just makes me laugh, and I don’t mind laughing at it before you guys do.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do – and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

The main problem with writing in verse is, if your fourth line doesn’t come out right, you’ve got to throw four lines away and figure out a whole new way to attack the problem. So the mortality rate is terrific.

I am the freest author in the world.

My neighbor has a circular driveway… he can’t get out.

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

I wrote an article on a new Porsche for ‚Automobile Magazine.‘ I knew the editor, and she asked me to write this article. So I’m more proud of that than anything.

When I die, I’m gonna leave my body to science fiction.