In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.

I was brought up to believe that what is out-of-doors should stay there and not be encouraged in any way.

Traitors who prevail are patriots; usurpers who succeed are divine emperors.

You can't really succeed with a novel anyway; they're too big. It's like city planning. You can't plan a perfect city because there's too much going on that you can't take into account. You can, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.

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

I was taught to read by my grandmother. Central to her method was a tale of unnatural love called 'The Duck and the Kangaroo'. Then, because my grandfather, Senator Gore, was blind, I was required early on to read grown-up books to him, mostly constitutional law and, of course, the Congressional Record. The later continence of my style is a miracle, considering those years of piping the additional remarks of Mr. Borah of Idaho.

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.