What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.

People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.

Americans worship the Constitution but do not observe it.

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

The Puritans left England for America not because they couldn't be Puritans in their mother country, but because they were not allowed to force others to become Puritans; in the New World, of course, they could and did.

Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.

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