In America all too few blows are struck into flesh. We kill the spirit here, we are experts at that. We use psychic bullets and kill each other cell by cell.

The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.

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

Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by increasing armaments.

There`s a tendency for Americans, particularly the simpler you are, the more you believe in the president as the kind of person to be.

A book of great beauty and manically exquisite insight with a wild and deadly humor . . . The only American novelist who may conceivably be possessed by genius.

A high church for the true mediocre.