The unfed mind devours itself.

Vitriolic really is personal. I am vitriolic. I am savage.

I look into my own black heart.

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.

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

I went to Europe to live in 1961. I'd never have written Julian if it hadn't been for the sequestered life that I led in Rome and the classical library at the America Academy.

The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true.