We are being governed by the dregs of the nation - and their brutality is so capricious that no one can feel certain that he will be safe tomorrow.

We are being governed by the dregs of the nation - and their brutality is so capricious that no one can feel certain that he will be safe tomorrow.

while it is certainly the biographer's business to describe the foibles, passions and idiosyncrasies which make his subject a person, his work will be very meagre if these individual traits are not also seen as part of a universal drama - for each man's life is also the story of Everyman.

whereas in childhood ... it was the parents' judgement that mattered to the child, later on the situation becomes reversed: it is then that the opinions of one's grown-up children become what matters, as well as their kindness.

The biographer's real business - if it is not too arrogant to say so - is simply this: to bring the dead to life.

[On writing biography:] If you wish to see a person you must not start by seeing through him.

[On writing biography:] ... every human life is at once so complex and so simple, so perplexing and so clear, so superficial and so profound, that any attempt to present it as a unified, consistent whole, to enclose it within a rigid frame, inevitably tempts one to cheat or to falsify.