I would be literally patrician in the sense that the senators in ancient Rome were called conscript fathers, paters, from which comes the word patrician. So if you come from a senatorial family, you are literally patrician in that sense, but that doesn't mean that you couldn't be Billy Carter, you know, of recent memory.

Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives.

We've had parallel lives. And frankly, I prefer mine to his. I would not like to be George Bush.

At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.

To have an interest in both sexes is equally normal. Whether it's practiced or not is something else. Some do. Some don't.

I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.