It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared. To learn this simple fact one must wade through a sea of evasions: history as sociology, leaders as teachers, bland benevolence as a motive force, when, finally, power is an end to itself, and the instinctive urge to prevail the most important single human trait, the necessary force without which no city was built, no city destroyed.

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.

No one reads novels anymore. And I don't see the situation improving. People prefer video games, reality TV, and films. There are so many reasons now not to read novels.

Then die. We must all do that. But die, as they say, game.

Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.