Their imaginations were flywheels on the ramshackle machinery of the awful truth.

This person has just arrived on this planet, knows nothing about it, has no standards by which to judge it. This person does not care what it becomes. It is eager to become absolutely anything it is supposed to be.

George Bush and his gang imagine they are being political geniuses.

Nietzsche had a little one-liner on how to choose a wife. He said, ''Are you willing to have a conversation with this woman for the next forty years?'' That's how to pick a wife.

My country is in ruins. So I'm a fish in a poisoned fishbowl. I'm mostly just heartsick about this. There should have been hope. This should have been a great country. But we are despised all over the world now. I was hoping to build a country and add to its literature. That's why I served in World War II, and that's why I wrote books.

You develop a style from writing a lot.

How important my books are or anybody's books are, I don't know. I don't think they are terribly important I think that they make people contented during the period they are reading them and this is worth something is to take care of somebody for a couple of hours.