I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.

The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.

Future generations will look back on TV as the lead in the water pipes that slowly drove the Romans mad.

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

Americans... are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.

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

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.