Where there is no desire or pursuits, there is no wholeness. But there are satisfying lesser states, fragments.

I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.

But women are always attracted to power. I do not think there could ever be a conqueror so bloody that most women would not willingly lie with him in the hope of bearing a son who would be every bit as ferocious as the father.

Novels, except as aids to masturbation, play no part in contemporary life.

To bring into the world an unwanted human being is as antisocial an act as murder.

Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.

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