Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.

To hear two American men congratulating each other on being heterosexual is one of the most chilling experiences - and unique to the United States. You don't hear two Italians sitting around complimenting each other because they actually like to go to bed with women. The American is hysterical about his manhood.

When you come from a family that has been political, and I was brought up by my grandfather in the Senate, my father was in Roosevelt's Cabinet, this is not the class that produces writers or reflective people.

These little books I write, such as The End of Freedom, about the post-9/11 political climate in the United States, sell in the hundreds of thousands of copies. Whereas, I hear novels on marriage are not selling. This is perhaps not the judgment of God, but it is certainly that of history.

The unfed mind devours itself.

To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.

Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family.