A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.

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."

Christianity is such a silly religion.

What matters finally is not the world's judgment of oneself but one's own judgment of the world.... Any writer who lacks this final arrogance will not survive very long in America.

There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.

I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.

CO₂ emissions anywhere threaten civilisation everywhere.