It never occurred to any Enlightenment figure in the eighteenth century that law was not preferable to man.

Celebrities are invariably celebrity-mad, just as liars always believe liars.

I suppose my liking for Italy is partly atavism, my family are of the old Roman stock. They came from the Alps north of Venice.

Whether you have an abortion, what you put in your own body, with whom you have sex - these are not affairs of the state. A government does not exist to control the citizens. When it does, it is a tyranny, and must be fought. The tree of liberty, Jefferson warned us, must be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

What we are is seldom what we want to be, while what we want to be is either denied us or changes with the seasons.

Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge.