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

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

You can only have a war with another country. You can't have a war with bad temper or a war against paranoids.

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

When you control opinion, as corporate America controls opinion in the United States by owning the media, you can make the masses believe almost anything you want, and guide them as you please.

When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'

You will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.