Happy the man with a book-length grievance — and rare. Each of these books contains one possible magazine article surrounded by more padding than an … - Wilfrid Sheed

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy — but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.

Not that there weren't real communists in the labor unions, and real spies in Washington, but these had nothing to do with the show that was being put on for us, which seemed entirely designed to Make Us Take This Thing Seriously. From abroad, where I was for much of the time, it looked as if the United States were trying to act like a superpower by holding its very own show trials.

He was truly after an art in which the creator could be as intelligent as he liked, but in which intelligence must be transmuted entirely into form, so that no lumps of thinking are left showing.