The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent.

By 1948, the Italians had begun to pull themselves together, demonstrating once more their astonishing ability to cope with disaster which is so perfectly balanced by their absolute inability to deal with success

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.

All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.

Freud did some serious damage to American literature - a lot of writers began therapy in the 1940s, after which they all became terribly egocentric.

I have always found men quite fathomable. They look entirely to their own interest.