Of all the ills that our poor ... society is heir to, the focal one, it seems to me, from which so much of our uneasiness and confusion derive, is the absence of standards.

The writer's object is - or should be - to hold the reader's attention.

To rush in upon an event before its significance has had time to separate from the surrounding circumstances may be enterprising, but is it useful? ... The recent prevalence of these hot histories on publishers' lists raises the question: Should - or perhaps can - history be written while it is still smoking?

Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

After absorbing the news of today, one expects to face a world consisting entirely of strikes, crimes, power failures, broken water mains, stalled trains, school shutdowns, muggers, drug addicts, neo-Nazis, and rapists. The fact is that one can come home in the evening, on a lucky day, without having encountered more than one or two of these phenomena.

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

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