"Humor is the healthy way of feeling 'distance' between one's self and the problem a way of standing off and looking at one's problems with perspective."

"There's a popular concept of 'intelligence' as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to, say, social skills. So people say that 'it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society.' But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys."

"Keep in mind that in the whole long tradition of storytelling, from Greek myths through Shakespeare through King Arthur and Robin Hood, this whole notion that you can't tell stories about certain characters because someone else owns them is a very modern one - and to my mind, a very strange one."

"You could move.' ---'Dear Abby' responds to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood."

"No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America."

"The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on."

"Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while."

"One enjoyed the mental pleasures through ignorance (of the Self), and that is cause of the worldly life. Only the bliss of the ‘Knowledge’ [of the Soul, one’s True Self] is to be enjoyed."