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

Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

I'm not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

The ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman.

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