"Now it's mine," Sammy said. "Everything's mine. I've got everything. Everybody's always saying you can't get everything and I'm the guy who swung it. I've got the studio and I've got the Harrington connections and I've got the perfect woman to run my home and I have my children."

I sat there as if I were watching The Phantom of the Opera or any other horror picture. I sat there silently in the shadows, for it was growing dark and the lights hadn't been switched on yet and I think he had forgotten he was talking to me. It was just his voice reassuring him in the dark.

"Sammy," I said quietly, "how does it feel? How does it feel to have everything?"

He began to smile. It became a smirk, a leer.

"It makes me feel kinda..." And then it came blurting out of nowhere - "patriotic."

-Budd Schulberg, What Makes Sammy Run?, 1941


.