Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

The ideal to which John Adams subscribed-that we would be a nation of laws, not of men-was quickly subverted when the churches forced upon everyone, through supposedly neutral and just laws, their innumerable taboos on sex, alcohol, gambling. We are now indeed a nation of laws, mostly bad and certainly antihuman.

A good deed never goes unpunished.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.

Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.

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.