Civilization is a youth with a molotov cocktail in his hand. Culture is the Soviet tank or L.A. cop that guns him down.

But it is a writer's duty to write and speak and record the truth, always the truth, no matter whom may be offended.

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

The most common form of terrorism in the U.S.A. is that carried on by bulldozers and chain saws.

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

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

Reason has seldom failed us because it has seldom been tried.