We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

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

Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand that it is immodest and greedy to want more.

If you are at the mercy of what they call print interviews and the mercy of people who write about you, they can always tell lies.

People like to re-invent you, according to cliché. There are a lot of stores about me that really apply only to Capote or Mailer or somebody else. Everything is a mish mash.

Instead of finding alternative energy sources, we try to subjugate entire regions of the world. People do not understand that by doing this, the United States are going to absolute ruin.

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