People are worse educated than they used to be. Certainly they are not very interested in reading books, as opposed to watching television, movies. They are used to getting things through the eye and the ear. In a small way, literature goes on being written, but few people like it. Once it's bureaucratized by the schoolteachers, the game's up.

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

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.

The unfed mind devours itself.

USA belongs to a handful of men who also control the media. Look at General Electric. It produces nuclear weapons for the Pentagon and also owns the NBC News cable channel, which is a very sophisticated censure apparatus, intrinsic to the system. It's genius. It's like an electronic cage around the nation which blocks information from getting through.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.