It is astonishing to think that millions of people in my time—now, too, I suppose—actually thought that at a given moment in history two human beings had evolved to a higher state than that of all the gods that ever were or ever will be. This is titanism, as the Greeks would say. This is madness.

We have a great deal to learn from Scandinavia and a great deal to be alarmed at from the Mediterranean.

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well.

We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.

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

The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.