I’m a born-again atheist.

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.

[Howard’s] eyes were open and very clear. I’d forgotten what a beautiful gray they were–illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive, and he was watching me, consciously, through...

I don’t see us winning the war. We have made enemies of one billion Muslims.”

Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.

We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.

The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie ”answers” questions on TV while...

It is difficult to find a reputable American historian who will acknowledge the crude fact that a Franklin Roosevelt, say, wanted to be President merely to wield power, to be famed and to be feared....

right” answer to every moral question. In practice, however, he seldom deviated from an opportunistic course, calculated to bring him power.

Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. Either the host dies, or the virus dies, or both die.

That loyal retainer of the Chase Manhattan Bank, the American president.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god’s purpose. Any movement of a liberal nature endangers his authority and that of his delegates on earth. One God, one King,...

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person...

It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element;...

You can’t really succeed with a novel anyway; they’re too big. It’s like city planning. You can’t plan a perfect city because there’s too much going on that you can’t take into account. You can,...

Christianity is such a silly religion.

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.

Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies.

God, no. Unless you hold office, there’s no point in being there.

Eventually all things are known. And few matter.

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.

We are the United States of Amnesia.

Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never...

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

I’ve always said, ‘I have nothing to say, only to add.’ And it’s with each addition that the writing gets done. The first draft of anything is really just a track.

I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery.

Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.

The unfed mind devours itself.

There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.

That is New York. I pointed to the waterfront just ahead as if the city were mine.

I was too polite to ask

In the twentieth century, science has been everything and the arts almost nothing by comparison. As a result, many artists now pretend to be scientists. They try to imitate the strategies of science. Paintings that...

To a man, ornithologists are tall, slender, and bearded so that they can stand motionless for hours, imitating kindly trees, as they watch for birds.

There is something about a bureaucrat that does not like a poem.

I’m a born-again atheist

Although Americans justify their self-interest in moral terms, their true interest is never itself moral.

Andy Warhol is the only genius I’ve ever known with an I.Q. of 60.

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather...

He will lie even when it is inconvenient: the sign of the true artist.

I sometimes think it is because they are so bad at expressing themselves verbally that writers take to pen and paper in the first place

A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink

And a Happy New Year to you.

With modern technology it is the easiest of tasks for a media, guided by a narrow group of political manipulators, to speak constantly of democracy and freedom while urging regime changes everywhere on earth but...

By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.