Gentlemen are not supposed to tell the truth about their sex lives, nor are ladies, for that matter. Of course Clinton lied – as would anybody in his position.
How to get people to vote against their interests and to really think against their interests is very clever. It’s the cleverest ruling class that I have ever come across in history. It’s been two hundred years at it. It’s superb.
I think since Watergate people are interested in what the past of this country was really like.
Before the cards that one is dealt by life are the cards that fate has dealt: one’s family.
A superficial education would be worse than none. But a full education would open every man’s eyes to the nature of human existence.
Anybody, at any time, may equally find himself victim or executioner.
Everybody has two legs, two lobes to the brain which is why we tend to be interested in symmetry, always balancing things.
I’d still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.
There’s no such thing as a war against terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.
I’m not for real revolutions, because they always bring you the opposite of what you want. You very seldom get what you want if you have a violent revolution.
Can you imagine having a love affair going on and on decade after decade? Macabre.
I have no social position and I stay away from what is known as society as much as possible.
Women are put on earth only to provide men with sons.
Poor John Simon – what a nightmare, to wake up in the morning and realize that you are John Simon.
Sex was a great no-no for Americans, so that was obviously an attraction to the writers, and since sex is a great part of most people’s lives, it’s a great subject.
I don’t think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.
I started to read my first book at about the age of six. I started to write a book simultaneously. Not to compete, just to augment. And that’s how one starts. Or I started.
We were to be forever at war with somebody. We were going to fight communism everywhere on earth even if it didn’t threaten us. It was a holy war, just as we’ve made one on terrorism and Islam, equally stupid and equally irrelevant.
The whole point to American journalism is what ought to be true is true.
I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.