“Five years ago I was a four-stone apology — today I am two separate gorillas.”

“I know that today it sounds unforgivable to have shot seventy lion in five years, but that was fifty years ago and circumstances of that time cannot be judged by those of today.”

“The fact is that five years ago I was, as near as possible, a different person to what I am tonight. I, as I am now, didn't exist at all. Will the same thing happen in the next five years? I hope so.”

“My protagonists, male and female, are me. And so I must be able to recall exactly what it was like to be five years old, and twelve, and sixteen, and twenty-two, and.... For, after all, I am not an isolated fifty-seven years old; I am every other age I have been, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven... all the way up to and occasionally beyond my present chronology.”

“I was honored five years ago, ‘man of the year’ in Michigan.”

“You see, ten years ago it was the front seat
Drivin' stoned and feelin' no pain.
Now here I am straight and sittin' in the back
Hitting Sixteen Parkside Lane.”

“If you want me to give you a two-hour presentation, I am ready today. If you want only a five-minute speech, it will take me two weeks to prepare.”

“I will not apologize for who I am.
I will not apologize for what I need.
I will not apologize for what I want!”

“Get up in one of our industrial centres today and say that two and two make four, and if there is any financial interest concerned in maintaining that two and two make five, the police will bash your head in.”

“If on some occasion I happen to read something in it — because, for instance, I neet to know a date — I am always disconcerted to find that two or five years ago I came to exactly the same conclusion, only to forget it because I had not succeded in living up to it; in fact, I had tenaciously been doing the very opposite.”