What is there to say, finally, except that pain is bad and pleasure good, life all, death nothing.

Since there is no system of public education, the great majority of my fellow citizens is frighteningly ignorant. They have no idea where Iraq is. They accept as the gospel whatever the government tells them. Good grief, any other normal country would have been against the Iraq war! But we live in an abnormal country, governed by experts in deceptive advertising.

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.

There are a great many people who have a vested interest in maintaining the stupidity of the American public.

It is vice to go to bed with someone you are not married to or have someone of your own sex or to get money for having sex with someone who does not appeal to you-incidentally, the basis of half the marriages of my generation.

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.

It is of no consequence to you what others think of you. What matters is what you think of them. That is how you live your life.