War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder ‘censorship,’ we call it ‘concern for commercial viability.

I hate the computer. I hate their spell-check. I won't ever do e-mail.

My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.'

I love working on a typewriter - the rhythm, the sound; it's like playing the piano, which I do, too.

A liberal pretending to be a conservative? That's like a straight person pretending to be gay to get greater acceptance.

President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.'