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."

Without communism ... our state lacks a Wizard of Oz to terrify all the people all the time. So the state looks inward, at the true enemy, who turns out to be - who else? the people of the United States.

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single...

Writers who teach tend to prefer literary theory to literature and tenure to all else. Writers who do not teach prefer the contemplation of Careers to art of any kind.

I was brought up to believe that what is out-of-doors should stay there and not be encouraged in any way.

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

People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.