Newspapers are so boring. How can you read a newspaper that starts with a 51-word lead sentence?

Why something in the public interest such as television news can be fought over, like a chain of hamburger stands, eludes me.

Politics: where fat, bald, disagreeable men, unable to be candidates themselves, teach a president how to act on a public stage.

The test of a good idea is its ability to last through a hangover

I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.

Those of Manhattan are the brokers on Wall Street and they talk of people who went to the same colleges; those from Queens are margin clerks in the back offices and they speak of friends who live in the same neighborhood.

All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.