If, as some say, evil lies in the hearts and not the institutions of men, then there's hardly a distinction worth making between, say, Hitler's Germany and Rebecca's Sunnybrook Farm.

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss.

Where all pretend to be thinking alike, it's likely that no one is thinking at all.

The true, unacknowledged purpose of capital punishment is to inspire fear and awe -- fear and awe of the State.

Women: We cannot love them all. But we must try.

The axiom of conditioned repetition, like the binomial theorem, is nothing but a piece of insolence.

There comes a point, in literary objectivity, when the author's self- effacement is hard to distinguish from moral cowardice.