When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

Nobody enjoys the ‚little show about nothing‘ humor more than me, but that is never the way I look at it.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

Independence is a heady draught, and if you drink it in your youth, it can have the same effect on the brain as young wine does. It does not matter that its taste is not always appealing. It is addictive and with each drink you want more.

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live.

How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

People have been fed this diet of pabulum, rights, and impulsive freedom. There’s just an absolute starvation for the other side of the story.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years, But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial ‚we.‘

There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

So many people are looking at what’s wrong, and I try to encourage them to look at what’s right in their life. A lot of people have it a lot worse than you do.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

I was a peripheral visionary. I could see the future, but only way off to the side.

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.

In my experience, many people confuse being cowardly with being nice.

If only the people who worry about their liabilities would think about the riches they do possess, they would stop worrying.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

One day it will be over, and I don’t care.

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul.

If you would judge, understand.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?