All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.

In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.

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

What is a political party but a conspiracy?

The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true. Since I ought to be arrogant, impressed with my social position, overwhelmed by my beauty, therefore I am.

Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.

We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.