Don't ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren't any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I'm never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.

On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.

Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.

Maybe there is no good God. But there is definitely a devil, and his predominant passion is the religion of Protestant fundamentalists. I believe my country is beginning to resemble a theocracy. Using television, the evangelists raise appalling amounts of money which they then invest in the election of mentally disabled obscurantists.

I liked the trichotomy, that's the only thing I ever liked.