It's so easy for propaganda to work, and dissent to be mocked.

One is and is not in the centre of the maelstrom of it all.

There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened.

All that happens is that the destruction of human beings - unless they're Americans - is called collateral damage.

The past is what you remember, imagine you remember, convince yourself you remember, or pretend you remember.

Language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you ... at any time.

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.

I don't think there's been any writer like Samuel Beckett. He's unique. He was a most charming man and I used to send him my plays.

I never think of myself as wise. I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence which I intend to allow to operate.

Don't forget the earth's about five thousand million years old, at least. Who can afford to live in the past?

This particular nurse said, Cancer cells are those which have forgotten how to die. I was so struck by this statement.

Singing provides a true sense of lightheartedness. If I sing when I am alone, I feel wonderful. It's freedom.

We therefore must keep the faith, despite the defeat of policies, because men pass with their policies whilst generations follow each other.

She had a body that even I coveted in a strictly Platonic sense.

Topography displays no favorites; North's as near as West. More delicate than the historians' are the map-makers' colors.

Bread Street Kitchen is a big operation, a unique beast, and it needs bedding in.

It is necessary to believe that the mixture of evil has produced the greatest possible good: otherwise the evil would not have been permitted.

Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.

Without social identity, there is, in fact, no society.

I am pretty bow-legged. It's annoying.

No further seek his merits to disclose, Or draw his frailties from their dread abode (There they alike in trembling hope repose), The bosom of his Father and his God.