“History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.”

To preserve the human race, it is now necessary to reorganize society. To this end, an Authority must be created with the power to control human population, to redistribute food, to purify air, water, soil, to re-pattern the cities.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

The American high school graduate is two years behind his English, French or German counterpart; in Alabama, God knows how far behind.

The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of ‘Tales from Livy’ that I’d found in my grandfather’s library.

The United States is the only civilized country in the world to class its teachers at the bottom of the social scale.

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.

What I am is something unbearable for the world of journalism and the world of cliches. I’m a realist.

I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.

It is true, as Sartre once wrote, referring to French Army atrocities in Algeria, that the real tragedy in our time is that any of us can be, interchangeably, victim or torturer.

You cannot deprive somebody of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, because that is a right – constitutional right.

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

When I say ‘president,’ I still mean Roosevelt – wisely, I think.

Everything’s wrong on Wikipedia.

People gossip. People are insecure, so they talk about other people so that they won’t be talked about.

I’ve never been a big fan of gossip. Being a victim of it, I knew how much it hurt.

I went straight from high school to ‘Gossip Girl,’ and both were very structured, scheduled environments, so I never had freedom to explore and carve my own path.

Gossip is conversation about people.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.

I don’t have a negative bone in my body. That’s why I could care less about any gossip. It doesn’t interest me. I’d rather sit down and write a song.

There are male as well as female gossips.

Hey, bro…So there’s like 7,000 paparazzi outside. Maybe two of you guys can roll over, and one of you can grab the Ferrari, and then we can just split? Thanks, bro.