[I]n a place with absolutely no private or personal life, with the incessant worship of a mediocre career-sadist as the only culture, where all citizens are the permanent property of the state, the highest form of pointlessness has been achieved.

It's no fun to appreciate to the full the truth of the materialist proposition that I don't have a body, I am a body.

And the pleasures and rewards of the intellect are inseparable from angst, uncertainty, conflict and even despair.

A melancholy lesson of advancing years is the realisation that you can't make old friends.

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.

Authors who moan with praise for their editors always seem to reek slightly of the Stockholm syndrome.

Your least favorite virtue, or nominee for the most overrated one? Faith. Closely followed—in view of the overall shortage of time—by patience.