Live as if you like yourself, and it may happen.
We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.
There is always time for failure
Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The ageing process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.
Like childhood, old age is irresponsible, reckless, and foolhardy. Children and old people have everything to gain and nothing much to lose. It's middle-age which is cursed by the desperate need to cling to some finger-hold halfway up the mountain, to conform, not to cause trouble, to behave well.
We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.
No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense, and relatively clean finger nails.
At the time, The Hotel New Hampshire was John Irving's favorite adaptation of his work, which meant a lot to all of us who worked on that movie. It's amazing to me that that was a studio movie. That was a summer studio release! If that doesn't tell you how much the business has changed, nothing will.
Don’t be in too much of a rush to be published. There is enormous value in listening and reading and writing—and then putting your words away for weeks or months–and then returning to your work to polish it some more.
I was homeless for a little bit. I was on people's couches, but it was an amazing journey. I got to make people laugh all the way.
We are to take no counsel with flesh and blood; give ear to no vain cavils, vain sorrows and wishes; to know that we know nothing, that the worst and cruelest to our eyes is not what it seems, that we have to receive whatsoever befalls us as sent from God above, and say, "It is good and wise,--God is great! Though He slay me, yet I trust in Him. " Islam means, in its way, denial of self. This is yet the highest wisdom that heaven has revealed to our earth.