As Oscar Wilde should have said, when bad ideas have nowhere else to go, they emigrate to America and become university courses.

Talk isn't work. Work is when you have pages in the evening that you didn't have in the morning.

People resent articulacy, as if articulacy were a form of vice.

Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a "good program": ethic equals showbiz.

The television critic, whatever his pretensions, does not labour in the same vineyard as those he criticizes; his grapes are all sour.

During the years when the barely educated immigrants were being replaced by barely educated native sons, Hollywood . . . proved a more reliable, cost-effective means of securing world domination than any nuclear arsenal or diplomatic démarche.

Vichy proves one thing: if you don't want to know how low your fellow citizens can fall, and crawl, don't lose a war.