“The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent.”

From April 1775 to July 1776, the undeclared war between England and its American colonies smoldered, flared up, appeared to sputter out… It was hardly, ever, a mass rebellion.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

Why not just eliminate the federal income tax?

I don’t even read most reviews, unless there is a potential lawsuit on view.

Since we have literally targeted our enemies, the Pentagon assumes that, sooner or later, rogues will take out our cities, presumably from spaceships.

I’m not paranoid, no. I’m different in that I have enemies. Very real ones.

Write something, even if it’s just a suicide note.

Some of my father’s fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, ‘I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any.’ We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.

A friend was surprised to hear me say that there was not one moment of my past that I would like to relive.

Actually, I can’t remember when I was not writing.

Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.

After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

My father had lifelong contempt for politicians.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

No matter how dense the darkness is, hope will always be the ray of light that eliminates it.

I’ve tried doing so, for it was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.

I try to eliminate as much dialogue as possible, and I guess Rambo is my really best experiment with how to eliminate dialogue.

Force when aggressively applied is “violence” and is, therefore, morally unjustifiable, but when it is used in the furtherance of a legitimate cause, it has its moral justification. The elimination of force at all costs in Utopian.

We must eliminate the gulf of mistrust and ignorance that keeps us from learning from each other.

Mastery is not measured by the number of terrible things you eliminate from your life, but by the number of times you eliminate calling them terrible.

The heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good.