“Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel.”

The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

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.

A cold atheistical materialism is the tendency of the so-called material philosophy of the present day.

There is a strong demand for Michael Jackson’s music and merchandise, and that will only increase as more material surfaces in the years following his death.

Materialism is the consciousness of wanting to exploit and enjoy.

Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer.

The grace of capitalism is to make wants feel like hopes, so that material objects and stuff can feel like the possibility of something heroic and civic.

Like the weaver, the writer works on the wrong side of his material. He has only to do with the language, and it is thus that he suddenly finds himself surrounded by sense.

Success with a small s is based on accumulation and materialism. Success with a large S is based on the unfoldment of our soul and the generosity of Spirit made manifest by the giving of our gifts.

Well-observed facts, though brought to light by passing theories, will never die; they are the material on which alone the house of science will at last be built.