To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.

People are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.

I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground.

The U.S. Bill of Rights is being steadily eroded, with two million telephone calls tapped, 30 million workers under electronic surveillance, and, says the author, countless Americans harassed by a government that wages spurious wars against drugs and terrorism.

First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.

Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.

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