What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.

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.

That famous writer’s block is a myth as far as I’m concerned. I think bad writers must have a great difficulty writing. They don’t want to do it. They have become writers out of reasons of ambition. It must be a great strain to them to make marks on a page when they really have nothing much to say, and don’t enjoy doing it. I’m not so sure what I have to say but I certainly enjoy making sentences.

Age bothers everybody. I was never narcissistic about my looks, but people thought that I should be so therefore I was.

I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.