“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.”

Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.

He who is last had best laugh.

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?

What I like least about myself is my belligerence.

I am told the Cheney-Bush team dislikes their junta being compared to the Nazis. If they ceased behaving like Nazis, no comparison would come to mind.

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

I am only at home in the present.

I’m all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.

The human race is plainly nothing in eternity, but to us, in time, it is everything and ought not to die.

While campaigning, I got to know many high-school teachers, and let me say that the good ones are the unsung heroes of our society, and the bad ones are the gravediggers.

In the writing of novels, there is the problem of how to shape a narrative.

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.