I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that's the most important thing there is for middle-class people.

We have a great deal to learn from Scandinavia and a great deal to be alarmed at from the Mediterranean.

A huge number of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. You have a people that don't know anything about the rest of the world, and you have leaders who lie to them, lie to them, and lie to them.

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.

In the town of Ravella, where I have a house, when the Supreme Court said that an act of sodomy, as they describe it, could not be committed between a man and his wife, the entire square burst into laughter.

What is a political party but a conspiracy?

I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no time for writing, which is why I went to Europe to live in 1961.