Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.

Anybody, at any time, may equally find himself victim or executioner.

If you're a critic of the rulers of the United States, you are either demonized, or you are trivialized by the press, and they do a very good job of making you into a non-person or a ridiculous person.

You will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.

Then die. We must all do that. But die, as they say, game.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.