It used to be the custom in this country that when you had made a career and were mature in judgment, you went to the Senate to give something back t the Republic. The idea that at age 25 you go out and buy a blow dryer and starting running for office is not what the founders had in mind

Most writers are middle-class and are the children of doctors or lawyers.

I was never my own type so I completely missed my beauty all through my youth.

Which other major religion is based on the Godhead incarnate being whipped, tacked to a cross, stabbed? Only the Marquis de Sade could have made up a sicker religion. It's no wonder that those brought up in such a culture hate life and enjoy inflicting pain. All societies are sick but some are sicker than others. Christian societies are certainly the sickest.

I went to Europe to live in 1961. I'd never have written Julian if it hadn't been for the sequestered life that I led in Rome and the classical library at the America Academy.

In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death

I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.