I'm a true reactionary. Like all patricians, I'd like to restore the original republic, which we lost 40 years ago when Harry Truman imposed the national security state on us, which has kept us at war, hot or cold, for almost half a century, and it's got us $4 trillion into debt.

The most interesting thing about writing is the way that it obliterates time. Three hours seem like three minutes.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

Having no talent is no longer enough.

France is a nation devoted to the false hypothesis on which it then builds marvelously logical structures.

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.