It was a pity that movies and live TV left New York for Hollywood. London theater, movies, television - until (Britain's) money ran out - were always better than ours since the city was the political capital of the country, as well as the artistic and literary one. In L.A. we've always been slightly sealed off from real life. It's no accident that two of our most interesting directors, Woody Allen and Bob Altman, are more or less settled in the real world.

It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.

It doesn't actually make any difference whether the President is Republican or Democrat. The genius of the American ruling class is that it has been able to make the people think that they have had something to do with the electing of presidents for 200 years when they've had absolutely nothing to say about the candidates or the policies or the way the country is run.

We're the most captive nation of slaves that ever came along. The moral timidity of the average American is quite noticeable. Everybody's afraid to be thought in any way different from everyone else.

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.

There's no such thing as a war against terrorism. It's idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It's advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.