USA is suffering between imperialists and anti-imperialists. That is the situation. The most powerful country in the world is on its way back to the Stone Age.

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.

Altruism is a brief phase through which some adolescents must pass. It is rather like acne. Happily, as with acne, only a few are permanently scarred.

I am a born novelist, which does not happen all that often. There are people who try to write for a certain time, then they become Ministers of Culture under de Gaulle, and they begin living their own fictions.

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.

Gentlemen are not supposed to tell the truth about their sex lives, nor are ladies, for that matter. Of course Clinton lied - as would anybody in his position.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.