Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be.

I'd say that Holland, Sweden, and Denmark are all better countries politically than the United States. The average person is far better off in one of those countries than he is in the United States and poverty of the sort that we have is absolutely unknown in Northern Europe.

One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon.

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.

I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.

The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."