I went to Europe to live in 1961. I’d never have written Julian if it hadn’t been for the sequestered life that I led in Rome and the classical library at the America Academy.
Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks.
I find in most novels no imagination at all. They seem to think the highest form of the novel is to write about marriage, because that’s the most important thing there is for middle-class people.
Love, like a sense of humor, is now claimed by everyone even though Love, like a sense of humor, is rather more rare than not, and to most of us poor muddlers unbearable at full strength.
To have an interest in both sexes is equally normal. Whether it’s practiced or not is something else. Some do. Some don’t.
It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.
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.