How do you think it would feel to be obliged to ask for a seat-belt extender on an airplane? For the unfashionably bulgy, life is a series of small humiliations.

If there is one lesson Rome teaches, it is that matter is good; in Rome the holy and the homely rise and converge.

In the face of evil, detachment is a dubious virtue.

Autobiography is a preemptive strike against biographers.

truth ... is the first casualty of tyranny.

The past can be tamed and controlled.

There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships.