On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.

I'd say that Holland, Sweden, and Denmark are all better countries politically than the United States. The average person is far better off in one of those countries than he is in the United States and poverty of the sort that we have is absolutely unknown in Northern Europe.

The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino.

I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars.

Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy

Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.

There is hardly an American male of my generation who has not at one time or another tried to master the victory cry of the great ape as it issued from the androgynous chest of Johnny Weissmuller, to the accompaniment of thousands of arms and legs snapping during attempts to swing from tree to tree in the backyards of the Republic.