Quote collection
457 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art."
"Christianity is such a silly religion."
"Which other major religion is based on the Godhead incarnate being whipped, tacked to a cross, stabbed? Only the Marquis de Sade could have made up a sicker religion. It's no wonder that those brought up in such a culture hate life and enjoy inflicting pain. All societies are sick but some are sicker than others. Christian societies are certainly the sickest."
"How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself."
"You can't be both a writer and a politician, at least not a good writer. A writer must always tell the truth as he sees it. And the politician must never give the game away."
"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."
"A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is ability to articulate human relationships."
"If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America painfully brief."
"Teaching has ruined more American novelists than drink."
"Ronald Reagan: a triumph of the embalmer's art."
"Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth."
"Liberal comes from the Latin liberalis, which means pertaining to a free man. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon."
"If you're a critic of the rulers of the United States, you are either demonized, or you are trivialized by the press, and they do a very good job of making you into a non-person or a ridiculous person."
"Drugs. If they did not exist our governors would have invented them in order to prohibit them and so make much of the population vulnerable to arrest, imprisonment, seizure of property, and so on."
"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."
"Maybe there is no good God. But there is definitely a devil, and his predominant passion is the religion of Protestant fundamentalists. I believe my country is beginning to resemble a theocracy. Using television, the evangelists raise appalling amounts of money which they then invest in the election of mentally disabled obscurantists."
"Most lives are spent putting on and taking off masks."
"I have always found men quite fathomable. They look entirely to their own interest."
"I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting."
"If [drugs] didn't exist, our government would have to invent them, the better to enact laws aimed at keeping the citizens "sinless and obedient.""