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.
Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
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.
No sooner does an American president take his oath of office than the speculation begins: Will he be reelected in four years' time? If not, who will succeed him? A member of his own party? The other party?
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.
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.
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
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.
If you are a Representative and want to be a Senator, you must be careful not to do anything which might upset the various forces you need to harness to get elected.
One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
I cannot remember when I was not fascinated by Henry Adams.
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
In character, as it were, the writer settles for an impression of what happened rather than creating the sense of the thing happening.
There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.
Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
Each youth betrays considerable anxiety about the wedding night ahead.
That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.
To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.
Never have children, only grandchildren.
Both Marx and Christ agree that in this life, a right action is consideration for the welfare of others.
The individual's desire to dominate his environment is not a desirable trait in a society which every day grows more and more confining.
Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
Some have deplored Lincoln's indifference to Christianity. But it was not religion, it was religiosity that put him off.
By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn't have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps - all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
I remember the Bond movies when I was a child. They were silent then.
I am only at home in the present.
I can't name three first-rate literary critics in the United States. I'm told there are a few hidden away at universities, but they don't print them in 'The New York Times.'
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
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.
A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
