"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

"The function of the artist is to make people like life better than they have before."

"To understand the man, you have to understand what he wanted. And what he wanted was always the same: to be a writer."

"I think I am a man without a country, except that I have a country, and it's full of people who are as crazy as I am."

"The America I grew up in was a country that made things. It made cars and steel and refrigerators and washing machines and television sets. Now we make money. We make money by moving money around."