I write in the morning at a table, longhand on yellow legal pads, just like Nixon, when I’m doing fiction.

For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.

Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.

First coffee, then a bowel movement. Then the Muse joins me.

It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.

I regard monotheism as the greatest disaster ever to befall the human race. I see no good in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam - good people, yes, but any religion based on a single...

...I'm no longer the scales most lovers are, weighing the deeds and gifts and treasures proffered against those received or stolen from the other, trying always to bring into fatal balance two separate things.