10 quotes
In my experience of fights and fighting, it is invariably the aggressor who keeps getting everything wrong.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
Nowadays every business in America says how warm it is and how much it cares — loan companies, supermarkets, hamburger chains.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
The true manipulator never has a reputation for manipulating.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
When success happens to an English writer, he acquires a new typewriter. When success happens to an American writer, he acquires a new life.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
The doltish euphemism of conglomerate America.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
Our vulgar delight in American vulgarity.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
What is this televisual mastery of Reagan's? It is a celebration of good intentions and unexceptional abilities. His style is one of hammy self-effacement, a wry dismay at his own limited talents and their drastic elevation.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
One of the many things I do not understand about Americans is this: what is it like to be a citizen of a superpower, to maintain democratically the means of planetary extinction. I wonder how this contributes to the dreamlife of America, a dreamlife that is so deep and troubled.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
Probably all writers are at some point briefly under the impression that they are in the forefront of disintegration and chaos, that they are among the first to live and work after things fall apart. The continuity such an impression ignores is a literary continuity.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)
In the end one cannot avoid the conclusion that AIDS unites certain human themes — homosexuality, sexual disease, and death — about which society actively resists enlightenment. These are things that we are unwilling to address or even think about. We don't want to understand them. We would rather fear them.
The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)