Eisenhower managed to begin the Vietnam war by not following his normal instinct of staying out of mischief. In his memoirs, he tells us why we didn't honor the Geneva accords and hold elections in Vietnam: because some 80 percent of the country would have voted for Ho Chi Minh. This is very candid. The sort of thing one might have found in Stalin'smemoirs, had he not made ghosts even of ghosts.

I wanted to be a politician and a movie star. But I was born a writer. If you're born that, you can't change it. You're going to do it whether you want to or not.~

People have forgotten the effects of prohibition. We have become the United Statesof Amnesia.

Vitriolic is a needless and malign attack on something, excessive attack on something. It is a rather pointless thing to do.

In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.

You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?

...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts.