Capable people do not understand incapacity; clever people do not understand stupidity.

A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

How boring these emotions are that we're caught in and can't get free of, no matter how much we want to.

But children can't be a center of life and a reason for being. They can be a thousand things that are delightful, interesting, satisfying, but they can't be a well-spring to live from. Or they shouldn't be.

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

You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant.

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.