Write what you know will always be excellent advice for those who ought not to write at all. Write what you think, what you imagine, what you suspect!

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

These little books I write, such as The End of Freedom, about the post-9/11 political climate in the United States, sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Whereas, I hear novels on marriage are not selling. This is perhaps not the judgment of God, but it is certainly that of history.

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.

American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.

Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.

Now you have people in Washington who have no interest in the country at all. They're interested in their companies, their corporations grabbing Caspian oil.