Everybody likes a bit of gossip to some point, as long as it's gossip with some point to it. That's why I like history. History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Can you imagine having a love affair going on and on decade after decade? Macabre.

Come to me and show me a small cancer and I'll tell you you've got a small cancer that should be cut out. That's realism but in America it's called cynicism.

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

One of the most fascinating aspects of politician-watching is trying to determine to what extent any politician believes what he says.

Universities are filled with poets and novelists conducting demure and careful lives in imitation of Eliot and Forster and those others who (through what seems to be have been discretion) made it.

U.S. certainly are not warlike. We don't want that. We want to make money, which I always thought was one of the most admirable things about Americans.