Some nights it was a melee, literally, where I’d be standing trying to defend myself for what I was doing. People would be screaming at me to do my old act, and getting actually violent and angry at me.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Nixon represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character almost every other country in the world has learned to fear and despise.

If ever I expected to come face to face with an angry Christian fundamentalist, it wasn’t in FAO Schwarz.

The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love – almost as violent and much more mischievous.