No less a bold and pugnacious figure than Winston Churchill broke down and was unable to finish his remarks at the sendoff of the British Expeditionary Force into the maelstrom of World War I in Europe.

In April 1917 the illusion of isolation was destroyed, America came to the end of innocence, and of the exuberant freedom of bachelor independence. That the responsibilities of world power have not made us happier is no surprise. To help ourselves manage them, we have replaced the illusion of isolation with a new illusion of omnipotence.

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

[T]he obverse of facile emotion in the 14th century was a general insensitivity to the spectacle of pain and death.

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

I have always felt like an artist when I work on a book. I see no reason why the word should always be confined to writers of fiction and poetry.

In a country where misery and want were the foundation of the social structure, famine was periodic, death from starvation common, disease pervasive, thievery normal, and graft and corruption taken for granted, the elimination of these conditions in Communist China is so striking that negative aspects of the new rule fade in relative importance.