You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.

There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

There are two things you never turn down: sex and appearing on television.

Eisenhower managed to begin the Vietnam war by not following his normal instinct of staying out of mischief. In his memoirs, he tells us why we didn't honor the Geneva accords and hold elections in Vietnam: because some 80 percent of the country would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. This is very candid. The sort of thing one might have found in Stalin'smemoirs, had he not made ghosts even of ghosts.