The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.

Vietnam was really an idealistic thing to stop the spread of communism, which, incidentally, it did. It was a pretty costly way to do it, but it achieved its goal.

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, "Please God, don't let me look poor." In the year 2000, they prayed, "Please God, don't let me look old." Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled. The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility.

Sometimes we don't even realize what we really care about, because we get so distracted by the symbols.

Everything was becoming allegorical, understood by the group mind, and especially this: "You're either on the bus...or off the bus.

I've never met an American who wanted to build an empire.