Society Quotes

"America never was America to me." "A writer's job is to give testimony, to bear witness to an age and the legacies of those who inhabit it." "I've always defined obscenity as any situation in which some people are forced to witness others exercising their liberties" "History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets" "Fiction isn’t bad. It is vital. Without commonly accepted stories about things like money, states or corporations, no complex human society can function" "Justice must always question itself just as society can exist only by means of the work it does on itself and on its institutions" "There is something very odd about the respect accorded to religion." "98% of the adults in this country are decent, hardworking, honest Americans. It's the other lousy 2% that get all the publicity. But then, we elected them " "What is there that is too dirty, too sordid, too depressing to be read about or spoken of? If literature cannot deal with the grimy underbelly of life, then what is it for?" "Sanity is not statistical." "The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better." "Political chaos is connected with the decay of language." "Actors are here to perform various different functions in different places in society, so the more places I can place myself in, the happier I am." "I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize." "The world is changing and since particularly dramatic changes are taking place we are living at a turning point."