“A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.”

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.

Remember, I’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there.

Does one ever read a politician’s books?

I know a lot of the Annapolis breed.

To get people to do needed things is the perennial hard task of government, not to mention of religion and philosophy.

I’m not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever – which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you’ll have to ask him about that.

There’s a kind of journalistic narcissism that New York-based journalists are guilty of.

Vanity and narcissism – the compulsive need to be admired and praised – undermine one’s courage, for one then fights on someone else’s conviction rather than one’s own.

There’s something really fun and spooky about that teenage feeling of narcissism or indestructibility.

If people are really narcissistic or have a need to be seen as more than they really are, or to be admired as having it all together, then they cannot be followed and trusted by others.