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

Certainly ‘The Judgment of Paris’ was the novel in which I found my own voice.

In classical times, it was a capital offense to speculate upon the hour of a king’s death or upon the identity of his successor.

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

To invent a war means that you’ve become a wartime president, and you can suspend much if not all of the Bill of Rights.

It’s always best to stay out of other people’s divorces. And their civil wars.

For the record, I’m a Second World War veteran and served in the Pacific.

Jack Kennedy very much enjoyed Fletcher Knebel’s thriller ‘Seven Days in May,’ later a film. The story: a jingo based on the real-life Admiral Arthur Radford plans a military coup to take over the White House.

It’s odd to meet a rather elderly man who says, ‘I’ve been reading you all my life.’ It makes you feel a slight chill.

I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.

Litigation takes the place of sex at middle age.

In essence, Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism Act would set up a national police force, over the long-dead bodies of the founders.

All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.