I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party - the property party. It's the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie answers questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.

Truman Capote has made lying an art. A minor art.