I don't deny or affirm anything. I'm not very personal.

Politically, of course, it's to the Right, but then the whole country is to the Right.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

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.

These are two opposing forces, and whenever I am in active politics, I stop writing. And when I'm writing, I don't politick.

Instead of finding alternative energy sources, we try to subjugate entire regions of the world. People do not understand that by doing this, the United States are going to absolute ruin.

I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand.