A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.

Groan and forget it.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.

Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.

A big iron needle stitching the country together.

I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

Teaching is the royal road to learning.

We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.

The sick soon come to understand that they live in a different world from that of the well and that the two cannot communicate.

Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.

Faithfulness to the past can be a kind of death above ground. Writing of the past is a resurrection; the past then lives in your words and you are free.

Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

In their sympathies, children feel nearer animals than adults.

Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.

The basic essential of a great actor is that he loves himself in acting.

A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

Only a fool would refuse to enter a fool's paradise when that's the only paradise he'll ever have a chance to enter.

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.

The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.

If you want a baby, have a new one. Don't baby the old one.

We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?

It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.

In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.

A broken bone can heal but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

At fourteen you dont need sickness or death for tragedy.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

Pleasure in irony ... is an ego trip.

Men live by intervals of reason under the sovereignty of humor and passion.

Humor can help you cope with the unbearable so that you can stay on the bright side of things until the bright side actually comes along.

It is the ability to take a joke, not make one, that proves you have a sense of humor.

What we're doing is fun - if you have any sense of humor at all!

You've got to have a sense of humor to keep your sanity.

I don't think I could ever do a network sitcom because the humor is often based on some trite circumstance. I don't want to be a part of a show where it's mostly about coming up with the jokes.

All my jobs have been with food in one way or another since 1948. My parents were in the hotel business, and I just loved the warm hearted people who worked so hard with such good humor.

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

The man with the real sense of humor is the man who can put himself in the spectator's place and laugh at his own misfortune.

Advertisers also know that humor can help bond us to their product.

I am a great believer that what makes our show different is the humor.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.