One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

I'm a true reactionary. Like all patricians, I'd like to restore the original republic, which we lost 40 years ago when Harry Truman imposed the national security state on us, which has kept us at war, hot or cold, for almost half a century, and it's got us $4 trillion into debt.

Our rulers for more than half a century have made sure that we are never to be told the truth about anything that our government has done to other people, not to mention our own.

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

All Americans born between 1890 and 1945 wanted to be movie stars.

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