You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.

September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible.

Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all - in one way or another - obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.

The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.

I find myself increasingly shocked at the unthinking and automatic rubbishing of men which is now so part of our culture that it is hardly even noticed.

Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

Words. Words. I play with words, hoping that some combination, even a chance combination, will say what I want.