Come to me and show me a small cancer and I'll tell you you've got a small cancer that should be cut out. That's realism but in America it's called cynicism.

I do not much care for nature, and believe that flowers belong in vases rather than loose and untidy on the ground.

Love is a fan club with only two fans.

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 best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino.

Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.

The war against terror is like a war against dandruff. It's a metaphor. It's not about anything.