The family in the West is finished... its origin was economic, not biological... the odd group of strangers that make up every family no longer have any reason to live together, to suffer from one another's jagged edges.

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize.

Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.

I am a correctionist. If something is wrong in society, it must be fixed. At least one should try to fix it.

Sex builds no roads, writes no novels, and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.

It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.

The American vice is explanation.

The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small "yes" at the center of a vast "no."

The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men.