Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink.

Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives.

I deny that there's such a thing as a gay person. I deny there's such a thing as a heterosexual person.

A good deed never goes unpunished.

You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind.

The United States is my subject, but as Hawthorne once wrote, "the United States are suited for many admirable purposes, but not to live in."

When the white race broke out of Europe 500 years ago, it did many astounding things all over the globe. Inspired by a raging sky-god, the whites were able to pretend that their conquests were in order to bring the One God to everyone, particularly those with older and subtler religions.