A good book is a kind of paper club, serving to rouse the slumbrous and to silence the obtuse.

When the situation is desperate, it is too late to be serious. Be playful.

A leader leads from in front, by the power of example. A ruler pushes from behind, by means of the club, the whip, the power of fear.

Every writer has his favorite coterie of enemies: Mine is the East Coast literati -- those prep school playmates and their Ivy League colleagues.

Three words remain that can yet stir the blood of man: the word 'rebellion'; the word 'revolt'; the word 'revolution'.

I always wanted to be a cowboy. But alas! I was burdened early with certain inescapable obligations to world literature.

God is a sound people make when they're too tired to think anymore.