Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.

Our only political party has two right wings, one called Republican, the other Democratic. But Henry Adams figured all that out back in the 1890s. "We have a single system," he wrote, and "in that system the only question is the price at which the proletariat is to be bought and sold, the bread and circuses."

Eisenhower managed to begin the Vietnam war by not following his normal instinct of staying out of mischief. In his memoirs, he tells us why we didn't honor the Geneva accords and hold elections in Vietnam: because some 80 percent of the country would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. This is very candid. The sort of thing one might have found in Stalin'smemoirs, had he not made ghosts even of ghosts.

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat.