"Historian: an unsuccessful novelist...." - Quote by H L Mencken

“The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.”

“Whenever a husband and wife begin to discuss their marriage they are giving evidence at a coroner's inquest.”

“If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.”

“A heavy guilt rests upon us for what the whites of all nations have done to the colored peoples. When we do good to them, it is not benevolence--it is atonement.”

“Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.”

“When I read history, I [see] what typically happens to presidents and the other party during tumultuous times and how people react when the economy is collapsing and they're losing their homes, losing their pensions - it sort of tracks, what ended up happening, because some of that is human nature.”

“I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don't mind admitting any of them.”

“Does fiction, artistic writing, have much of a future? I must say it's on the way out.”

“I came on the old and best ways of writing through ignorance and experiment and was startled when truths leaped out of brushes like quail before gunshot.”