The ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman.

Nothing is durable, I think anybody who thinks sex is durable is going to have a lot of grief.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

In writing and politicking, it's best not to think about it, just do it.

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.