I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.

Never offend an enemy in a small way.

I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.

There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic.

There are two things you never turn down: sex and appearing on television.