The world is an oyster but you don't crack it open on a mattress.

The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning..

For the political world, I have come to believe, is fundamentally beyond anyone's control, yet we all go on as though it were a kind of vehicle that ….

The parochial snobbery of these people was partly responsible for their failure to convert the Indians. Probably they also preferred to take land fro….

Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a de….

How to live had started out as an analytical problem of how to place himself so as to intercept the flow of money in the society..

And yet one can't forever stand on the shore; at some point, even if filled with indecision, skepticism, reservation and doubt, you either jump in or….

As a writer, I've always believed that while my work and I myself are embedded in whatever period I am writing about, clearly I am sensitive to the w….

The wedding of Christianity or Judaism with nationalism is lethal..

Just remember, kid, you can quicker get back a million dollars that was stole than a word that you gave away..

My conception of the audience is of a public each member of which is carrying about with him what he thinks is an anxiety, or a hope, or a preoccupat….

The famous are balloons far up in the sky, to be envied for their quiet freedom or shot down as enemies..

Controlled hysteria is what's required. To exist constantly in a state of controlled hysteria. It's agony. But everyone has agony. The difference is ….

The camera has its own kind of consciousness; in the lens the Garden of Eden itself would become ever so slightly too perfect..

An idol tells people exactly what to believe, God presents them with choices they have to make for themselves. The difference is far from insignifica….

Man must shape his tools lest they shape him..

The witch-hunt was a perverse manifestation of the panic which set in among all classes when the balance began to turn toward greater individual free….

The writer must be in it; he can't be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best wor….

One had the right to write because other people needed news of the inner world, and if they went too long without such news they would go mad with th….

Every time I am reading actors I can pretty well tell which ones have studied with Meisner. It is because they are honest and simple and don't lay on….

A child's spirit is like a child, you can never catch it by running after it; you must stand still, and, for love, it will soon itself come back..