Craig Ferguson

“between safety and adventure I choose adventure”

“Time is only linear for engineers and referees.”

“For example, in Paris, if one desires to buy something, you enter the store and say "Good morning, sir" or "madam," depending on what is appropriate, you wait until you are greeted, you make polite chitchat about the weather or some such, and when the salesperson asks what they can do for you, then and only then do you bring up the vulgar business of the transaction you require.”

“Anyway, if you needed something really dangerous, get a gun. It's easy, it's cheap, and it's the American way.”

“America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of descent....We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand on certain issues, then good. I'm glad we're in America, and don't have to oppress each other over it. We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for a thousand years.”

“Laughter separates us from despair, and gives us a chance at love.”

“He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.”

“The Bible has been through at least half a dozen translations by the time you read it. Plus, when the word of God is infected by the hand of man, that is, written down, it is tainted.”

“Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken.Infallibility is a sin in any man.All laws can be broken and are.Often.”

“If you can't trust, you can't be trustworthy.”

“It never occurred to them that God may have provided the world with a vast array of very brainy medical types for the very reason of solving problems such as theirs. However, there is one thing that the medical profession cannot do and that is save people from being idiots.”

“It turns out that speeding irresponsibly in a large truck, placing personal wealth ahead of the welfare of others, is one of the greatest sins in the Universe....”

“The truth is that Leon, like a lot of those-maybe everyone-who trips on acid, never really came back. he recovered but he was never the same guy again. He had lost something-innocence of hell. Acid presses a little button in your mind that should never be pressed”

“For my birthday that year Anne gave me an inflatable atlas globe, along with a birthday card in which she wrote:I give you the world.Have fun blowing it up.”

“From this moment on I'd dedicate my life to rock and roll and take as many drugs as possible. What could possibly go wrong?”

“School did give me one of the greatest gifts of my life, though. I learned how to read, and for that I remain thankful. I would have died otherwise. As soon as I was able, I read, alone. Under the covers with a flashlight or in my corner of the attic—I sought solace in books. It was from books that I started to get an inkling of the kinds of assholes I was dealing with. I found allies too, in books, characters my age who were going through or had triumphed against the same bullshit.”

“Violence of any kind, once it starts, is like fucking a gorilla-you ain't done tillthe gorilla's done.”

“This story is true. Of course, there are many lies therein and most of it did not happen, but it's all true.In that sense it is deeply religious, perhaps even biblical.”

“Allowances can always be made for your friends to disagree with you. Disagreement, vehement disagreement, is healthy. Debate is impossible without it. Evil does not question itself, only hope questions itself. Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken. Infallibility is a sin in any man. All laws can be broken and are. Often. Like when a bumblebee flies or an ancient regime is toppled.”

“Harry Potter, he sends a message on Owl Mail while us poor old muggles have to make do with instantaneous emails and texting. Oh, if only we could be like you Harry Potter, with your four day owl delivery!”

“The Afghan government is as corrupt as a prostitute with a law degree.”

“A junkie will steal your purse, and then help you look for it.”

“If you absolutely believe that what you do is right, you're bullet-proof.”

“Tomorrow is your future's yesterday.”

“I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's.”

“On that same tour we ran into a band at Aylesbury Friars, a biggish venue in Oxfordshire, England. They were a four-piece from Ireland called U2. They seemed like nice fellows and they sounded pretty good, but we didn’t keep in touch. They’re probably taxi drivers and accountants by now.”

“I'm always a bit shy around evil people...”

“He will know from and early age that failure is not disgrace. It's just a pitch that you missed, and you'd better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot heard round the world. My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don't.”

“I didn't say no because between safety and adventure I choose adventure.”

“That's why I believe in a Constitution which separates church from state. I've seen what happens when they get in cahoots.”

“It's a book. It's mine. And it's done.”

“This book could scare them. The sex, the violence, the dream sequences and the iconoclasm - I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with that. I understand that. It was very uncomfortable to write some of it”

“The Universe is very, very big.It also loves a paradox. For example, it has some extremely strict rules.Rule number one: Nothing lasts forever.Not you or your family or your house or your planet or the sun. It is an absolute rule. Therefore when someone says that their love will never die, it means that their love is not real, for everything that is real dies. Rule number two: Everything lasts forever.”

“Fraser's mother, Janice, was actually quite a happy soul but she had to hide it because, like all pseudo intellectuals, she thought being cheery made her look stupid, which of course she was for believing that rubbish in the first place.She like to talk about Sartre sometimes, just as insurance.”

“If a man doesn't know how to dance he doesn't know how to make love, there I said it!”

“WHITE AMERICANS HAVE A VERY UNUSUAL SENSE OF HISTORY. They make it up as they go along, constantly revising to suit their tastes in a manner that would make Stalin blush. Very few of them saw any irony in the fact that during a recent nasty Balkans conflict, when Uncle Sam intervened to stop the Serbs from ethnically cleansing the Bosnians, the military action was performed using Apache helicopter gunships. Helicopters named after a people that had been ethnically cleansedin the United States less than one hundred years previously. Sixteen lane highways across the sacred burial grounds. Yee-hah.”

“Its hard to stay up. Its been a long long dayAnd you've got the sandman at your door. But hang on, leave the TV on and lets do it anyway.Its ok. You can always sleep through work tomorrow. Ok?Hey, Hey, Tomorrow's just your future yesterday.Tell the clock on the wall, "Forget the wake up call."Cause the night's not nearly through.Wipe the sleep from your eyes. Give yourself a surprise.Let your worries wait another day.And if you stay too late at the bar,At least you made it out this far. So make up your mind and say, "Let's do it anyway!"Its OkYou can always sleep through work tomorrow, ok? Hey, Hey, Tomorrow's just your future yesterday. Life's too short to worry about the things that you can live withoutAnd I regret to say, the morning light is hours away.The world can be such a fright, But it belongs to us tonight.What's the point of going to bed?You look so lovely when your eyes are red.Tomorrow's just your future yesterday.”

“It seemed that I performed better sober than drunk. Who knew?”

“She still cared for me, and the best way I could make amends to her was to be happy.I do have a knack for finding great women.”

“I didn't flee a dictator or swim an ocean to be an American like some do. I just thought long and hard about it.”

“Divorce lawyers stoke anger and fear in their clients, knowing that as long as the conflicts remain unresolved the revenue stream will keep flowing.”

“Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.”

“After all this time I found that the novel is in fact punk rock.”

“I found out it is just as hard to make a movie that you are not proud of as it is to make one you love.”

“I was ambitious and desperate to direct my first film, so I capitulated and blew it. Never again. Never fucking again.”

“Sometimes they would just pay me to stay home and not do anything else, which sounds fantastic but doesn't do much for your ego. Its probably a little like getting alimony-the money is nice but has a nasty aftertaste.”

“I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.”

“Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.”

“Gillette--The best a man can get."I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a comedian. I was going to have an amazing life and kids with Helen and die like Chaplin a thousand years from now in my Beverly Hills mansion surrounded by my adoring family, with the grieving world media standing by. Instead, I was just another show-business mediocrity. A drunk who shat his pants and ran for help. My life had been careless and selfish. Pleasure in the moment was my only thought, my solitary motivation. I had disappointed whoever had been foolish enough to love me, and left them scarred. I was a very long way from being the best a man can get.”

“I told her that I didn't want to take any drugs. That I had come here not to take drugs. "Listen," she said, not unkindly, "up until now I would say that ninety-nine percent of all the narcotics you have taken in your life you bought from guys you didn't know, in bathrooms or on street corners, something like that. Correct?"I nodded."Well these guys could have been selling you salt or strychnine. They didn't care. They wanted your money. I don't care about your money, and, unlike your previous suppliers, I went to college to study just the right drugs to give to people like you in order to help you get better. So, bearing all that in mind ... Take the fucking drugs!"I took the drugs.”