The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically. It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.

Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.

If we do our deficit spending on weapons, at least we get weapons. Then if we need weapons, we have them. If we don't need them, no harm is done.

Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words 'Write what you know' is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don't. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?

It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life - this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

This country was founded by religious nuts with guns.