The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag.

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.

A high church for the true mediocre.

Somewhere, something incredible happened in history - the wrong guys won.

The private terror of the liberal spirit is invariably suicide, not murder.

In every death is a celebration; in every ecstasy, one little death.

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.