Quote collection
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"[ New York ] is a place that worships incompetence particularly if it's combined with energy and paranoid self-confidence. Only in a city like New York could Truman Capote have made it, or John Simon."
"If the splitter of hairs has a sharp enough knife, the fact of life itself can be chopped into nothing."
"I suppose that one is always tempted to challenge those who think that they and they alone possess the truth or the way or the key to the mystery."
"By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives realistically portrayed."
"A superficial education would be worse than none. But a full education would open every man's eyes to the nature of human existence."
"For true happiness, it is not enough to be successful oneself . . . one's friends must fail."
"...you will do more harm than good by attempting to supplant old dogmas and customs with new dogmas. It will be the same in the end except that the old is less militant, less dangerous than a new order imposed by enthusiasts."
"God, or what have you, will not be found at the far end of a syllogism, no matter how brilliantly phrased or conceived."
"People in my situation get to read about themselves whether they want to or not. It's generally wrong. Or oversimplified - which is sometimes useful."
"[Norman Mailer] is against masturbation, he's against homosexuality. He believes that murder is essentially sexual. I think he's rather an anthology of all the darkest American traits."
"U.S. certainly are not warlike. We don't want that. We want to make money, which I always thought was one of the most admirable things about Americans."
"The best novelist of my generation is an Italian living in Paris, still working and improving - Italo Calvino."
"Come to me and show me a small cancer and I'll tell you you've got a small cancer that should be cut out. That's realism but in America it's called cynicism."
"Nixon was a Southern Rim President, and so antipathetic to the old guard."
"A writer represents his family history. My grandfather was a senator and my father served in the Roosevelt administration. In other words, I grew up in politics. This is why it seemed perfectly natural to take part in the battles of my time, and to participate in the writing of the history of my country."
"My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country."
"Poor John Simon - what a nightmare, to wake up in the morning and realize that you are John Simon."