I want the reader to turn the page and keep on turning to the end.

The fleet sailed to its war base in the North Sea, headed not so much for some rendezvous with glory as for rendezvous with discretion.

To be a bestseller is not necessarily a measure of quality, but it is a measure of communication.

Human beings of any age need to approve of themselves; the bad times in history come when they cannot.

When every autumn people said it could not last through the winter, and when every spring there was still no end in sight, only the hope that out of it all some good would accrue to mankind kept men and nations fighting. When at last it was over, the war had many diverse results and one dominant one transcending all others: disillusion.

To put away one's own original thoughts in order to take up a book is a sin against the Holy Ghost.

The appetite for power is old and irrepressible in humankind, and in its action almost always destructive.