The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

I do believe that America's deepest political sickness is that it is a self-righteous nation.

The horror of the Twentieth Century was the size of each new event, and the paucity of its reverberation.

The sole virtue of losing your short-term memory is that it does free you to be your own editor.

Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon

I usually need a can of beer to prime me.

Everything wrong with America led to the point where the country built that tower of Babel, which consequently had to be destroyed. And then came the next shock. We had to realize that the people that did this were brilliant. It showed that the ego we could hold up until September 10 was inadequate.