"Reagan has turned America into a tax..." - Quote by John Updike

“All blessings are mixed blessings.”

“The United States, democratic and various though it is, is not an easy country for a fiction-writer to enter: the slot between the fantastic and the drab seems too narrow.”

“I was an only child. I needed an alternative to family life - to real life, you could almost say - and cartoons, pictures in a book, the animated movies, seemed to provide it.”

“When I took over as president, I studied the Constitution, and the more I studied it, the more I realised that it does not prevent the president of India from giving the nation a vision. So when I went and presented this vision in Parliament and in legislative assemblies; everyone welcomed it, irrespective of party affiliations.”

“Among the friends of Union, there is great diversity of sentiment and of policy in regard to slavery and the African race among us.”

“Mitt Romney subscribes to the cynical logic that says the American dream belongs to some of us but not all of us.”

“Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths - animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies - or it will dwindle and pale.”

“It is well known, that on the Ohio, and in many parts of America further north, tusks, grinders, and skeletons of unparalleled magnitude are found in great numbers, some lying on the surface of the earth, and some a little below it ... But to whatever animal we ascribe these remains, it is certain that such a one has existed in America, and that it has been the largest of all terrestrial beings.”

“Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.”