I don't see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.

The hatred Americans have for their own government is pathological, if understandable. At one level it is simply thwarted greed: since our religion is making a buck, giving a part of that buck to any government is an act against nature.

There is something about the state putting the power to bully into the hands of subnormal, sadistic apes that makes my blood boil.

How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

We've had parallel lives. And frankly, I prefer mine to his. I would not like to be George Bush.

I would be literally patrician in the sense that the senators in ancient Rome were called conscript fathers, paters, from which comes the word patrician. So if you come from a senatorial family, you are literally patrician in that sense, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't be Billy Carter, you know, of recent memory.