"Humor is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue."

“Every artist feels alone and isolated, Friends are very important in terms of all sorts of definitions of oneself. They tell you what you are and what they are aside from the intellectual aspects.”

“As I have grown older I am more and more convinced that I have not grown up, that my powers have not come to me, not my real wisdom to do and achieve the right thoughts. I lack some dear grace. I cannot seem to steady down and get the single eye. There is a curriculum in living in which I have not studied. This may be happiness. I want to know it; I should feel better prepared for immortality. I do not wish to arrive fagged at last and a bit slipshod in the spirit, as if I had a hard time all my mortal life. It is not complimentary to God.”

“It's a good feeling to see the kids try to make it, try to get to the big leagues. Everyone here has an opportunity to achieve his dream. I was lucky I was able to achieve my dream.”

“In this political climate, people are so shut down to other ideas - I call it a hardening of the categories - that if you can get them to open up and laugh, there is a possibility of improvement, and a possibility of change. I think humor sneaks up on people, and before you know it, you're laughing at something you might not agree with.”

“There are no great fanfares for the truly great moments of your life. Just dripping taps and the sound of your own footsteps, walking from one room into another”

“Questions about political theatre always overlook America's most powerful and effective political theatre, which is always thriving: the American musical. The politics is conservative but, to my mind, effective and insidious.”

Source : "Questions for John Lahr" by John Lahr, www.newyorker.com. January 23, 2009.

“One of the great challenges of our age, in which the tools of our productivity are also the tools of our leisure, is to figure out how to make more useful those moments of procrastination when we're idling in front of our computer screens.”

Source : "How I learned a language in 22 hours" by Joshua Foer, www.theguardian.com. November 09, 2012.

“The building of a just and peaceful world order, the aim of the United Nations, is hampered not by a dearth of ideas, resources, and manpower but by the lack of will on the part of governments to take the required steps ...”