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" I stopped performing because I don't have the temperament of a performer. You have to want to do the same thing over and over again. Once I got it right, I didn't want to do it again. I always use the analogy of a novelist who has to read his novel in public night after night. I just didn't want to do it. "

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" I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them. "

Tom Lehrer

Out

Figure

Problem

" Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. "

" Irreverence is easy - what's hard is wit. "

" On my income tax 1040 it says 'Check this box if you are blind.' I wanted to put a check mark about three inches away. "

" It is a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years. "

" Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal, if you don't use your thumbs. "

" My last public performance for money was in 1967. For free, it was 1972, with the exception of two little one-shot, one-song things. But that's just for friends, out of friendship for the people involved, and also because it was fun. "

" Be prepared, and be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you. "

" Bad weather always looks worse through a window. "

" I loved high school, but I wouldn't want to do it again. "

" You can't be satirical and not be offensive to somebody. "

" Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. "

" I know that there are people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that! "

Tom Lehrer

Hate

Know

" Eddie Izzard is wonderful, I think, but I've only seen that one HBO special he did. He's one of the few people who talk about stuff other than girlfriends and relationships and flatulence and genitalia. There are very few of them who actually talk about real stuff. "

" I always prided myself on at least trying to be literate and use the right words, and if the audience didn't get it, then they could go home and look it up. "

" I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. "

Tom Lehrer

Writing

Night

" I'm not interested in promoting myself or revealing to total strangers anything about me. That's not my job. "

" I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery. "

" I wasn't really a performer by temperament. "

" Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize. "

" I figure I wrote 37 songs in 20 years, and that's not exactly a full-time job. It wasn't that I was writing and writing and writing and quit. Every now and then I wrote something, and every now and then I didn't. The second just outnumbered the first. "

" In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.' "

" Apart from that Mrs Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? "

" An actress must never lose her ego - without it she has no talent. "

" Political satire became obsolete when they awarded Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize. "

" Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. "

Tom Lehrer

Life

Piano

" The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban landmines. "

" I thought about majoring in Math, Chemistry and English, but Math had the fewest requirements, so I went with it. I knew I wanted to teach, and Math was my field, so I studied Math. "

" I feel that if a person has problems communicating the very least he can do is to shut up. "

Tom Lehrer

Person

Shut Up

" The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also. "

Tom Lehrer

Audience

College