[ Of Ronald Reagan :] A triumph of the embalmer’s art.

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent too. Words are used to disguise, notto illuminate, action: You liberate a city by destroying it. Words are used to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

I’m all for bringing back the birch, but onlybetween consenting adults.

[ Of Richard Nixon :] He turned being a BigLoser into a perfect triumph by managing to lose the presidency in a way bigger and more original than anyone else had ever lost it before.

He will lie even when it is inconvenient, the sign of the true artist.

Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand. It is immodest and greedy to want more.

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.

There are certain truths so true that they are practically unbelievable.

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.