“Never have I risked my life, or even my comfort, in the service of mankind. Shame on me.”

“Since there is no one else to praise me, I will praise myself -- will say that I have never tampered with a single tooth in my thought machine, such as it is. There are teeth missing, God knows -- some I was born without, teeth that will never grow. And other teeth have been stripped by the clutchless shifts of history -- But never have I willfully destroyed a tooth on a gear of my thinking machine. Never have I said to myself, 'This fact I can do without.”

“Comedians and jazz musicians have been more comforting and enlightening to me than preachers or politicians or philosophers or poets or painters or novelists of my time. Historians in the future, in my opinion, will congratulate us on very little other than our clowning and our jazz.”

“My life is nothing but room for you,’ I said. ‘It could never be filled by anyone but you.”

“The fact remains that I am stuck with the risk of being me. I am compelled, therefor, to spread the risk around a little, if I can.”

“In my prison cell i sitWith my britches full of $hitand my balls are bouncing gently on the floorand i see the bloody snagwhen she bit me in the bagoh, i'll never f--- a polack any more”

“We'd been apart so long--I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that.""My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you.”