People took such awful chances with chemicals and their bodies because they wanted the quality of their lives to improve. They lived in ugly places where there were only ugly things to do. They didn't own doodley-squat, so they couldn't improve their surroundings. so they did their best to make their insides beautiful instead.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We are dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go out and do something. We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different.

You're learning that you do not inhabit a solid, reliable social structure - that the older people around you are worried, moody, goofy human beings who themselves were little kids only a few days ago.

Maybe I did hurt him, but I don’t think I could have hurt him much. He was one of the best-protected human beings who ever lives. People couldn’t get at him because he just wasn’t interested in people.

Take life seriously but none of the people in it.

But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

All people are insane. They will do anything at any time, and God help anybody who looks for reasons.

Do I resent rich people? No. The best or worst I can do is notice them. I agree with the great Socialist writer George Orwell, who felt that rich people were poor people with money.

Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren't diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinion anymore.