Eisenhower's career demonstrated how it is possible to fool all the people all the time...'I may be stupid,' he once said at a press conference, 'but at least I'm sincere!' Actually, he was neither, but it suited his purpose to play the part of the bumbling man of good will who was 'not an expert in these matters' but somehow would do his best.

Movie acting, I later realized, reminds me of contract bridge. Each requires the same concentration, intense short-term memory, and obliviousness to everything else until the last trump is called - or whatever it is they do.

At a certain age, you have to live near good medical care — if, that is, you're going to continue. You always have the option of not continuing, which, I fear, is sometimes nobler.

Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.

I’m not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don’t. Move on and move out.

History is idle gossip about a happening whose truth is lost the instant it has taken place.

The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.