As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire.

[H]ope takes you by the throat like a stranger, it makes your heart leap.

My first career ambitions involved turning into a boy; I intended to be either a railway guard or a knight errant.

I believe this was [Margaret Thatcher] estimate of the voter: "These people are so stupid that they will vote for me because they think I know how to run the household."

For historians, creative writers provide a kind of pornography.

I spend a lot of my time talking to the dead, but since I get paid for it, no one thinks I'm mad.

Every leader operates under the threat of assassination.