The subject of a novel is not the plot. Who remembers what happened to Lucien de Rebempre in the end?

Tea at college was served on long tables with an urn at the end of each. Long baguettes of bread, three to a table, were set out with meagre portions of butter and jam; the china was coarse to withstand the schoolboy-clutch and the tea strong. At the Hôtel de Paris I was astonished at the fragility of the cups, the silver teapot, the little triangular savoury sandwiches, the éclairs stuffed with cream.

At one with the One, it didn't mean a thing besides a glass of Guinness on a sunny day.

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.

Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.

In the taxi I let my hand lie on her leg like a promise, but I had no intention of keeping my promise.

A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.