Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark.

In modern consumer society, the attack on mother-child eroticism took its total form; breastfeeding was proscribed and the breasts reserved for the husband's fetishistic delectation. At the same time, babies were segregated, put into cold beds alone and not picked up if they cried.

The tragedy of machismo is that a man is never quite man enough.

Reading was my first solitary vice (and led to all others). I read while I ate, I read in the loo, I read in the bath. When I was supposed to be sleeping, I was reading.

It [childbearing] was never intended to be as time-consuming and self-conscious a process as it is. One of the deepest evils in our society is tyrannical nurturance.

War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests.

War is the admission of defeat in the face of conflicting interests: by war the issue is left to chance, and the tacit assumption that the best man will win is not at all justified. It might equally be argued that the worst, the most unscrupulous man will win, although history will continue the absurd game by finding him after all the best man.