I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground.

I'm a much worse guest than I am a host, and I'm not an awfully good host either. I really like being alone.

Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art.

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.

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

Although drugs are immoral and must be kept from the young, thousands of schools pressure parents to give the drug Ritalin to any lively child who may, sensibly, show signs of boredom in his classroom. Ritalin renders the child docile if not comatose. Side effects? "Stunted growth, facial tics, agitation and aggression, insomnia, appetite loss, headaches, stomach pains and seizures." Marijuana would be far less harmful.

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'