The constitution has broken down. We have no enemies except the ones we select and direct towards the nearest nuclear bombs. They need an enemy to provoke, a diversion. This is the mentality of tenth-rate people who are in politics because corporate America likes them. They are malleable. They give them contracts to build missile shields that will never work. It's deeply corrupt.

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.

How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

I'm a born - again atheist.

I am a correctionist. If something is wrong in society, it must be fixed. At least one should try to fix it.

What matters finally is not the world's judgment of oneself but one's own judgment of the world.... Any writer who lacks this final arrogance will not survive very long in America.