truth ... is the first casualty of tyranny.

The dream police will not let me have sexual fantasies.

Facts mean nothing to wounded feelings.

One can be tired of Rome after three weeks and feel one has exhausted it; after three months one feels that one has not even scratched the surface of Rome; and after six months one wishes never to leave it.

Every generation reinvents the wheel - and in the process it often adds to rather than subtracts from a woman's burdens.

The past is a sorry country.

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