I lived through all these times, these great events, without caring very much, concerned with my own aging rather than the world’s. Most of us do likewise. History is the heavy traffic that prevents us...

Imagination is highly suspect. Reality is what is beautiful. But we are blind to it because it is familiar.

He taught me that language was rubbery, plastic. It wasn’t, as I thought, something you just use, but something you can play with. Words were made up of little bits that could be shuffled, turned...

You do not win a war by dying for your country. You win a war by making sure that some poor bastard dies for his.

The US military and the CIA got busy working on plans for the conquest of Cuba. And it would be no Mickey Mouse boat operation this time. This time, Fidel Castro and his hairy henchmen...

He used to say the uglier things are the longer they live, and the ugliest things live forever.

Freedom had no place in the Soviet System. Freedom was another word for anarchy, and that wouldn’t do at all.