Congress no longer declares war or makes budgets. So that's the end of the constitution as a working machine.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Gay)
Actually, there is no such thing as a homosexual person, any more than there is such a thing as a heterosexual person. The words are adjectives describing sexual acts, not people. The sexual acts are entirely normal; if they were not, no one would perform them.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Art)
To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Books)
I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ( "I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority).
Preface.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Books)
Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.
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A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those "liberals" who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.
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In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words.
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in Quotes & Aphorisms (Books)
You hear all this whining going on, "Where are our great writers?" The thing I might feel doleful about is: Where are the readers?
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We must always remember that the police are recruited from the criminal classes.
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The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western World. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity, much less dissent.
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