Despite the warnings of other times, the impetuous and the confident continue their indiscriminate cultivation of weeds at the expense of occasional flowers.

There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.

This separation was absolute in our original Republic. But the sky-godders do not give up easily. In the 1950s they actually got the phrase In God We Trust onto the currency, in direct violation of the First Amendment.

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes.

Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do.

American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

I don't deny or affirm anything. I'm not very personal.