Propaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda for something. It's a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others.

The Republicans’ plan is that if they can’t buy the 2012 election they will steal it.

Language is like soil. However rich, it is subject to erosion, and its fertility is constantly threatened by uses that exhaust itsvitality. It needs constant re-invigoration if it is not to become arid and sterile.

The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely for the reading of it.

Money buys access; access buys influence.

Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversations.

The torment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause, is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and "mangled mind" leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.