I met Jack Kennedy in November, 1946... We went out on a double date and it turned out to be a fair evening for me. I seduced a girl who would have been bored by a diamond as big as the Ritz.

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

The function of socialism is to raise suffering to a higher level.

Khomeini has offered us the opportunity to regain our frail religion ... faith in the power of words.

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

America is a hurricane, and the only people who do not hear the sound are those fortunate if incredibly stupid and smug White Protestants who live in the center, in the serene eye of the big wind.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

Love asks us that we be a little braver than is comfortable, a little more generous, a little more flexible. It means living on the edge more than we care to.

Reaching consensus in a group is often confused with finding the right answer.

Let's name the sentimental hog Arnold

It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.

I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.

I never slept alone until I was married.

The greatest time wasted, is the time getting started.

And it's a cold place the world, especially when warmed by arsen.

Poverty is not simply having no money - it is isolation, vulnerability, humiliation and mistrust.

I've always said that Watership Down is not a book for children. I say: it's a book, and anyone who wants to read it can read it.

When intelligent people read, they ask themselves a simple question: What do I plan to do with this information?

RUMOUR: "Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports.