A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.

I said, well, it's a very primitive country, the United States, and it's full of superstitions, which come out of a very fundamental religious bias, which is primitive Christianity.

I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

Always a godfather, never a god.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delfino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens.