Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed.

Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.

I have always looked upon alchemy in natural philosophy to be like enthusiasm in divinity, and to have troubled the world much to the same purpose.

When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.

It's funny - almost every comedian that I started out with moved to L.A., except for my two friends Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer. And my two friends that are doing the best in comedy, the most successful friends I have, are Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer.

Being able to laugh at a situation can help you hang on to your perspective. And there's an intimacy in laughter that nothing else can come close to.

People with a sense of humor tend to be less egocentric and more realistic in their view of the world and more humble in moments of success and less defeated in times of travail.

With 'J', at a deep base level, there is still some comedy, but that masculinist voice that had driven so many of my novels I suddenly did not want to occupy. I wasn't reneging on it; I just didn't want to do it.