I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.

I have stolen more quotes and thoughts and purely elegant little starbursts of writing from the Book of Revelation than anything else in the English language - and it is not because I am a biblical scholar, or because of any religious faith, but because I love the wild power of the language and the purity of the madness that governs it and makes it music.

Fishing from a boat seems like dilettante bullshit - like hunting wild boar with a can of spray paint from the safety of a pick-up truck

Of all the men that have run for president in the twentieth century, only George McGovern truly understood what a monument America could be to the human race.

I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. ... For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.

I guess that's one of the things about growing up in the fifties - it never occurred to me that you wouldn't be at least as successful as your parents.

Whatever he might have denied me was unimportant; it was the fact that he could deny me anything at all, even what I didn't want