The whole notion of journalism being an institution whose fundamental purpose is to educate and inform and even, one might say, elevate, has altered under commercial pressure, perhaps, into a different kind of purpose, which is to divert and distract and entertain.
When you're young and you're striving, it's all uphill, and it's easier to climb. Then, when you get and look around, you sort of say, 'Wow, the altitude's kinda thin up here!'
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.
This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.
I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer's as an insult and decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces I could against this wretched disease. I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer's it's the best form of Alzheimer's to have.
With Alzheimer's patients, you have to be very careful what you say when you're looking at them over their bed. Because once in a while, they understand it.
I do like books on anatomy. I have to say I'm an amateur physician, I guess.
I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.
I'm amazed that anyone is interested in what I have to say.
I really love the internet. They say chat-rooms are the trailer park of the internet but I find it amazing.
The aphorism in which I am the first master among Germans, are the forms of 'eternity'; my ambition is to say in ten sentences what everyone else says in a book - what everyone else does not say in a book.
I just say 'Amen' a lot. It's just about being grateful and never taking things for granted.
I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one.
Whenever I'm in the U.K., people say I have an American accent. Which is, obviously, funny.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.
I'm a writer. In Latin America, they say I'm a Latin-American writer because I also write in Spanish and my books are translated, but I am an American citizen and my books are published here, so I'm also an American writer.
What happens is, illegal immigrants can run across the border, drop a baby, and say, 'Ha-ha, there's nothing you can do now. My kid's an American citizen.' Well, that wasn't the intent of the 14th Amendment. Americans would not agree with that. It creates a horrible incentive.
I suppose you could say I love outlaw American culture.
The American people have no control over what the military does. We have no say in American foreign policy.
I say let's not gamble with American jobs and America's future.
