I don't seem to be cynical to myself but how what I say goes down with others is their problem. I'm realistic.

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

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt - until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small 'yes' at the center of a vast 'no.'

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single, well, frenzied and virulent god, is not as useful to the human race as, say, Confucianism, which is not a religion but an ethical and educational system.

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