Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.
There's a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
When anyone says to me, 'Can you keep a secret?' I say, 'Why should I, if you can't?'
McCain is significant in the sense that he has no significance at all on any subject.
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Politically, of course, it's to the Right, but then the whole country is to the Right.
To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
Do nothing that is not natural - and ritual is natural - and all will be for the best.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
I might become an ascetic, live in India. A little rice is about the best I can do now.
Most writers write books that they wouldn't read. I ought to know; I've done it myself.
There is a terrible garrulousness in most American writing, legacy of the old Frontier.
As a schoolboy, I read most of Carl Sandburg's six-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln.
In actual fact, I have always been a conservative cross, borne sadly by liberal friends.
World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.
I began life as an absolute monarchist - on condition, of course, that I be that monarch.
Anybody who is stupid enough to want to be remembered deserves to be forgotten right now.
There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.
I have never been particularly impressed by the self centered musings of my fellow writers.
Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one's family.
We are pleased to dismiss politics as entirely corrupt, if not financially, intellectually.
Half the American population no longer reads newspapers: plainly, they are the clever half.
Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.
History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.
I have no social position and I stay away from what is known as society as much as possible.
I'm in Hollywood right now, surrounded by nothing but the sons and grandsons of movie stars.
I think I have a normal threshold of anger, but it's true that I am, by nature, belligerent.
For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail.
I assume that the point of American democracy is you can express any point of view you want.
I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it's too discouraging.
People have forgotten the effects of prohibition. We have become the United Statesof Amnesia.
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice.
Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit, it will be repeated over and over again.
Nothing is durable, I think anybody who thinks sex is durable is going to have a lot of grief.
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
In the German concentration camps, Jews wore yellow stars while homosexuals wore pink lambdas.
Americans, in general, are ignorant, bigoted, and deeply unhappy with their declining incomes.
I think since Watergate people are interested in what the past of this country was really like.
We've had parallel lives. And frankly, I prefer mine to his. I would not like to be George Bush.
Television is a great leveler. You always end up sounding like the people who ask the questions.
The war against terror is like a war against dandruff. It's a metaphor. It's not about anything.
I've yet to read a memoir by anyone I've known at all well that came anywhere near to the truth.
A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships.
Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.
The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.
Poor John Simon - what a nightmare, to wake up in the morning and realize that you are John Simon.
I could be a lot happier. I could be the senator from Aerospace taking bribes, and be quite happy.
I have no television to go on so I get a lot of writing done. That's my substitute for television.
In matters of faith, inconvenient evidence is always suppressed while contradictions go unnoticed.