The challenge of history is to recover the past and introduce it to the present.

Attention and focus are essential skills for writers in a noise-filled world.

The trouble with socialists is that they let their bleeding hearts go to their bloody heads.

I have never gone on a real trip, never taken a holiday. The best holiday for me is spent in my workshops when nearly everybody else is on vacation.

The world by and large has to be reinvented.

Before you ask more questions, think about whether you really want to know the answers.

Few men are raised in our estimation by being too closely examined.

I love making friends.... it's people I can't stand.

A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell.

If I pop off and do something drastic, everyone's going to realise because they know I'm 50. Anyway, middle-aged women are sensational.

To murder character is as truly a crime as to murder the body: the tongue of the slanderer is brother to the dagger of the assassin