Past, Present And Future Are Not Amenities

Why Is It So Hard To Be Serious, So Easy To Be Too Serious?

My Attitudes Aren't Directed Toward Characters At All. I Don't Feel Sympathetic Toward Some Characters, Unsympathetic Toward Others. I Don't Love Some Characters, Feel Contempt For Others. They Have Attitudes; I Don't.

A Writer Decides To Follow Some Ideas And Not Others For Reasons That Aren't Always Clear To Him. It's Often A Matter Of Intuition.

In This Country There Is A Universal Third Person, The Man We All Want To Be. Advertising Has Discovered This Man. It Uses Him To Express The Possibilities Open To The Consumer. To Consume In America Is Not To Buy; It Is To Dream. Advertising Is The Suggestion That The Dream Of Entering The Third Person Singular Might Possibly Be Fulfilled.

America Is The World's Living Myth. There's No Sense Of Wrong When You Kill An American Or Blame America For Some Local Disaster. This Is Our Function, To Be Character Types, To Embody Recurring Themes That People Can Use To Comfort Themselves, Justify Themselves And So On. We're Here To Accommodate. Whatever People Need, We Provide. A Myth Is A Useful Thing.