In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death

We must always remember that the police are recruited from the criminal classes.

I went to Europe to live in 1961. I'd never have written Julian if it hadn't been for the sequestered life that I led in Rome and the classical library at the America Academy.

Rome ... at its most decadent, had never thought of hiring an actor to go through the motions of being an emperor while the Praetorian Guard ruled.

Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.

Never have children, only grandchildren.

Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.