The true confessors have been aware that not only is life mostly failure, but that in one's failure or pettiness or wrongness exists the living drama of the self.

Come to me and show me a small cancer and I'll tell you you've got a small cancer that should be cut out. That's realism but in America it's called cynicism.

If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient."

I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.

I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.

I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.

If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics.