As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.

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.

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.