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."

I do not admire 'the people,' as such. No one really does. Their folk wisdom is usually false, their instincts predatory. Even their sense of survival - so highly developed in the individual - goes berserk in the mass. A crowd is a fool.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived.

When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a California governor and then an American president who would reduce taxes for his employers, the Southern and Western New Rich, much of whose money came from the defence industries. There is nothing unusual about this arrangement. All recent presidents have had their price-tags.

Many human beings enjoy sexual relations with their own sex; many don't; many respond to both. This plurality is part of our nature and not worth fretting about.

The brain that doesn't feed itself, eats itself.