My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.

We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.

Perfect love sometimes does not come until the first grandchild.

I spend most of my time in California. I feel I am fueled by rage and by the political climate there. I am angry most of the time when I am there, which might be unbearable for someone else, but for me it's fuel for my writing.

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize.