The true religion of America has always been America.

Like all men who are Napoleonic in their ambitionshe has instincts about the nature of growth, a lover's sense of the momentof crisis, and he knewhow costly is defeat when it is not soothed by greater consciousness, and how wasteful is the profit of victory when there is not the courage to employ it.

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

I don't trust a man who uses the word evil eighteen times in ten minutes. If you're half evil, nothing soothes you more than to think the person you are opposed to is totally evil.

If only gravity were working, the path would be symmetrical, it is the wind resistance that produces the tragic curve.

When I read it ["Tough Guys Don't Dance"], I don't wince, which is all I ever ask for a book I write.

Only another writer can know how much damage writing a novel can do to you. It's an unnatural activity to sit at a desk and squeeze words out of yourself.