The worst that can be said about pornography is that it leads not to anti-social acts but to the reading of more pornography

Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.

If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.

The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

I deny that there's such a thing as a gay person. I deny there's such a thing as a heterosexual person.

You will be favourable to Burr, and so must fail because the American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earth, Washington the greatest man that ever lived, Burr the wickedest, and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the reader's attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.