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

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players. ... I have 10 or so, and thats a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.

True wisdom is to know the extent of what you don't know quite as well as you know what you do know.

Nothing is durable, I think anybody who thinks sex is durable is going to have a lot of grief.