As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But …

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). [1]

By and large, serious fiction was the work of victims who portrayed victims for an audience of victims who, it was oddly assumed, would want to see their lives…

If you think back to the Swift Boat debacle of 2004, the surface issue was John Kerry's honesty and bravery as a sailor in Vietnam. Far more powerful, however,…

Language has always been important in politics, but language is incredibly important to the present political struggle. Because if you can establish an atmosph…

The politician is : trained in the art of inexactitude. His words tend to be blunt or rounded, because if they have a cutting edge they may later return to wou…