To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

It's frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

It could be said that going to church will not make one a Christian. But . . . refusing to fellowship with believers will not make you one either.

Hope is the forward-looking part of memory.

I wished she’d never stop squeezing me. I wished I could spend the rest of my life as a child, being slightly crushed by someone who loved me.

The path of social advancement is, and must be, strewn with broken friendships.

Parkinson's is a slow but inevitable process. It's hard living with it on a daily basis. The difficulty facing people with it is that they never quite know 'Can I or can't I do this today?'

Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight. You know, it's a hell of a hoot.

Angela Carter's fiction blew me away and really instilled a passion for writing, bolstered by Vladimir Nabokov. But in general, I can't point to any one thing. I just always loved books and writing.

Every believer is God's miracle.

When I stepped from hard manual work to writing, I just stepped from one kind of hard work to another.

I suggest to everyone: Look in the mirror. Ask yourself: Who are you? What are your talents? Use them, and do what you love.