Once people get hung up on theology, they've lost sanity forever.

Poor John Simon - what a nightmare, to wake up in the morning and realize that you are John Simon.

Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.

These people [Bush Administration] are for the most part rip-off artists. Notice that they're all gas and oil men from Cheney, to the two Bushes; I think Rumsfeld also.

The British are absolutely hung up on class, and whenever they start to really - class for the English is like sex for Americans: They start to shake all over when the subject comes up.

I am a born novelist, which does not happen all that often. There are people who try to write for a certain time, then they become Ministers of Culture under de Gaulle, and they begin living their own fictions.

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