Creative geniuses are a slap-happy lot. Treat Them with respect.

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history.

In six pages, I can't even say "Hello.

Contrary to what people think, I slave over my books.

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson - the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.