Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.
What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.
All I want is that Americans still be able to read the alphabet in a hundred years. I am not very ambitious.
Don’t ever make the mistake with people like me thinking we are looking for heroes. There aren’t any and if there were, they would be killed immediately. I’m never surprised by bad behaviour. I expect it.
I have been saying for the some time now that America has only one party – the property party. It’s the party of big corporation, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.
No one reads novels anymore. And I don’t see the situation improving. People prefer video games, reality TV, and films. There are so many reasons now not to read novels.
The same people own the media that own the White House that own the Congress that own the oil fields. They all work together to give a false view of the world to the American people.
Commercialism is doing well that which should not be done at all.
Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.
Writers who teach tend to prefer literary theory to literature and tenure to all else. Writers who do not teach prefer the contemplation of Careers to art of any kind.
Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.
The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.
Laughing at someone else is an excellent way of learning how to laugh at oneself; and questioning what seem to be the absurd beliefs of another group is a good way of recognizing the potential absurdity of many of one’s own cherished beliefs.
I believe it’s my pastoral duty to convert friends to atheism.
Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard.
There’s a lot to be said for being nouveau riche, and the Reagans mean to say it all.
There are two things you never turn down: sex and appearing on television.
The New York Times is the worst in that hardly anybody can write English over there. Most of it reads like slight translations from the German.
Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer’s art.
Politically, of course, it’s to the Right, but then the whole country is to the Right.