Economists, like royal children, are not punished for their errors.

Financial crises are like fireworks: they illuminate the sky even as they go pop.

The dividing line between wish and need was never clear.

One of the admirable features of British novelists is that they have no scruple about setting their stories in foreign settings with wholly foreign personnel.

Saudi Arabia is a puritanical state that claims a monopoly of wisdom and virtue.

To make a love story, you need a couple of young people, but to reflect on the nature of love, you're better off with old ones. That is a fact of life and literature - and of the novel ever since it fell in love with love in the 18th century.

Soaring prices for crude oil, falling production surpluses, wild speculation in commodities, a rush into the precious metals, turmoil in the Middle East, assertive oil producers: it is 1973-74 all over again, and at dictation speed.