All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

They like life alright, but that they would like it even better if they could know that it was going to end sometime.

He was seemingly born not only with a gift for language, but with a particularly nasty clock which makes him go crazy every three years or so.

Unhappy failures need not apply.

No one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

What Franklin Roosevelt did, which really offended them, was he strengthened the labor unions - made it possible for them to strike. The oligarchs were furious because the working class was not supposed to have any power at all.