“Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.And all music is.”

“The biggest truth to face now – what is probably making me unfunny now for the remainder of my life – is that I don't think people give a damn whether the planet goes or not. It seems to me as if everyone is living as members of Alcoholics Anonymous do, day by day. And a few more days will be enough. I know of very few people who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren.”

“The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.”

“Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is dead machinery.”

“A sacred picture of Saint Anthony alone is one vertical, unwavering band of light. If a cockroach were near him, or a cocktail waitress, the picture would be two such bands of light. Our awareness is all that is alive and maybe sacred in any of us. Everything else about us is just dead machinery.”

“When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlighenment and comfort at top speed”

“People talk a lot about all the homosexuals there are to see in Greenwich Village, but it was all the neuters that caught my eye that day. These were my people -- as used as I was to wanting love from nowhere, as certain as I was that almost anything desirable was likely to be booby-trapped.”