Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.

Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time...'I may be stupid,' he once said at a press conference, 'but at least I'm sincere!' Actually, he was neither, but it suited his purpose to play the part of the bumbling man of good will who was 'not an expert in these matters' but somehow would do his best.

Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what's going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it's trouble. Monkeys make trouble.

Many writers who choose to be active in the world lose not virtue but time, and that stillness without which literature cannot be made.