Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.
The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.
Back in the East you can't do much without the right papers, but with the right papers you can do anything The believe in papers. Papers are power.
Words... They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get...
Why do I have a sense of impending disaster? Sonders is after my niece and has discovered the secret address where I am sending her to the safe keeping of my sister-in-law Miss Blumenblatt, who has ne...
To say that it is without pace, point, focus, interest, drama, wit or originality is to say simply that it does not happen to be my cup of tea.
Success in life is to maintain this ecstasy, to burn always with this hard gemlike flame.
PLAYER : It costs little to watch, and little more if you happen to get caught up in the action, if that’s your taste and times being what they are.
Now for a handful of guilders I happen to have a private and uncut performance of the rape of the Sabine Women - or rather woman, or rather Alfred -Get your skirt on Alfred!
I will take his secret to the grave, telling people I meet on the way.
I fell in love with literature and stayed lovesick all my life.
For all the compasses in the world, there's only one direction, and time is its only measure.
Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light. Dante reserved a place in his Inferno for those who wilfully live in sadness - sullen in the sweet air, he says. Your 'honour' is all shame and timi...
A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom.
No one gets up after death-there is no applause-there is only silence and some second-hand clothes, and that's death.
Getting away with murder must be quite easy provided that one’s motive is sufficiently inscrutable.
You think human nature is a beast, that it must be put in a cage. But it's the cage that makes the animal bad.
When I was twelve I was obsessed. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at 'meretrix', a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. 'Meretrix'! This was no...
What are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?
Well, he us a nab, he is mortal, death comes to us all, etcetera, and consequently he would have died anyways, sooner or later. Or to look at it from the social point of view - he's just one man among...