Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

I'm a true reactionary. Like all patricians, I'd like to restore the original republic, which we lost 40 years ago when Harry Truman imposed the national security state on us, which has kept us at war, hot or cold, for almost half a century, and it's got us $4 trillion into debt.

The unfed mind devours itself.

Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

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

If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well.