“Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.”

“Usually marriages break up because people won't take the trouble to get through the middle breakfasts. It's no trick to get through the first breakfasts, when love is new and there are bows on the eggs. And once the middle breakfasts are over the last breakfasts, when plenty of allowances have been made on both sides and an understanding friendship and deep love have been established, are a joy forever.”

“The apple of knowledge is not far from here. As soon as you've eaten it, you'll know as much as I do. But be careful not to make any mistakes: most of the apples hanging from that tree are enveloped in a thick skin. If you taste it, you will be brought low, beneath man; the inner part of the fruit will bring you up to the level of an angel.”

“If you don not come to repent your existence,
You'll never approach the circle of gnostics and drunkards
Unless in other's eyes you become an infidel,
In the creed of lovers, you'll never be Muslim.”

“I lie there and wait, and remind myself over and over that it doesn’t last forever. That there will be another day and after that, yet another day. One of those days, I’ll get up and eat breakfast and feel okay.”

“I just want to be beside you everywhere,
As long as we're together, honey, I don't care,
cause you've started something,
Oh, can't you see?
That ever since we met
You've had a hold on me”

“If you want to avoid upsetting these people (Muslim fundamentalists) you have to let Indonesia commit genocide in East Timor, otherwise they'll be upset with you. You'll have made an enemy. If you tell them they can't throw acid in the faces of unveiled women in Karachi they will be annoyed with you. If you say we insist, we think that cartoonists in Copenhagen can print satire on the Prophet Muhammed you've just made an enemy. You've brought it on. You're encouraging it to happen. So unless you're willing to commit suicide for yourself and for this culture, get used to the compromises you'll have to make and the eventual capitulation that will come to you, but bloody well don't do that in my name…”

“Oh, you've got a gun? So, you want to pop that?”

“I want to know if you've touched the center of your own sorrow, if you've been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.”

“you're rich in love
you're great bed
you'll see the world
you'll knock 'em dead
and all the thick books that you've read
will count for nothing in the end”