“The Turner Diaries’ is a racist daydream by a former physics teacher writing under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald.”

I never said I was gay, because I don’t think anyone is.

Washington turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda.

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use.

Love is not my bag.

Temperamentally, I am suspicious of belonging to anything. When I ran for office, I debated seriously whether or not to run as an independent because I was not eager to be saddled with the Democratic Party, because any party label is committing.

A racial or religious or tribal identity is a kind of fact.

Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.

The truth about Pearl Harbour is obscured to this day. But it has been much studied.

Gossip is conversation about people.

Corporations must pay tax.

Primarily, I am a prose writer with axes to grind, and the theatre is a good place to do the grinding in. I prefer comedy to ‘serious’ drama because I believe one can get the ax sharper on the comedic stone.

Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.

He who is last had best laugh.

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the company of vulgar people, because they have a power of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of another race altogether.

Race? It is a feeling, not a reality. Ninety-five per cent, at least. Nothing will ever make me believe that biologically pure races can be shown to exist today….

We must give Italians a sense of race.

Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it,

I could have told you. I hate horses, and horse racing. Always have. But you didn’t bother to ask me.

Iowa is an amazing place. But I didn’t have much race around me. I was definitely not like everyone there.

Every group we belong to – by gender, sex, race, religion, age – is an in-group, surrounded by an immense out-group, living next door and all over the world, who will be alive as far into the future as humanity has a future. That out-group is called other people. It is for them that we write.

I think more women should be involved in politics for the good of the human race.