The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
I’m in Hollywood right now, surrounded by nothing but the sons and grandsons of movie stars.
Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.
Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.
Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that’s the end of the constitution as a working machine.
All in all, I would not have missed this century for the world.
The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes.
If you are at the mercy of what they call print interviews and the mercy of people who write about you, they can always tell lies.
I liked the trichotomy, that’s the only thing I ever liked.
I have been on the cover of Time magazine. My father was on the cover of Time, and my grandfather was on the cover of Time.
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, however, write a perfect sentence now and then. I have.
Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.
As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.
I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.
To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
We’ve had parallel lives. And frankly, I prefer mine to his. I would not like to be George Bush.
History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.
At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation, and prejudice.
Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head.
The Gores, I think, are a bit brighter than the Bushes, historically speaking.