A political convention is after all not a meeting of a corporation's board of directors; it is a fiesta, a carnival, a pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together of greed, practical lust, compromised idealism, career-advancement, meeting, feud, vendetta, conciliation, of rabble-rousers, fist fights (as it used to be), embraces, drunks (again as it used to be) and collective rivers of animal sweat.

Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men.

I did like Robert Vavra's book not only for its so very good photographs but for the text as well. He's no ordinary fellow, obviously.

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

In America few people will trust you unless you are irreverent.

To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise.

For 40 years we were led to think of the Russians as godless, materialistic and an evil empire. When the Cold War ended, we suddenly discovered that Russia was a poor Third World country. They had not been equipped to take over the world. In fact, they were just trying to improve a miserable standard of oppressive living, and couldn't. They had to spend too much on arms build-up. We didn't win the Cold War; we bankrupted the Russians. In effect, it was a big bank exhausting the reserves of a smaller one.