The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.

Capote I truly loathed. The way you might loathe an animal. A filthy animal that has found its way into the house.

If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.

These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick.

Maybe there is no good God. But there is definitely a devil, and his predominant passion is the religion of Protestant fundamentalists. I believe my country is beginning to resemble a theocracy. Using television, the evangelists raise appalling amounts of money which they then invest in the election of mentally disabled obscurantists.

When Ronald Reagan's career in show business came to an end, he was hired to impersonate, first, a California governor and then an American president who would reduce taxes for his employers, the Southern and Western New Rich, much of whose money came from the defence industries. There is nothing unusual about this arrangement. All recent presidents have had their price-tags.