It was man who ended the Cold War in case you didn't notice. It wasn't weaponry, or technology, or armies or campaigns. It was just man. Not even Western man either, as it happened, but our sworn enemy in the East, who went into the streets, faced the bullets and the batons and said: we've had enough. It was their emperor, not ours, who had the nerve to mount the rostrum and declare he had no clothes. And the ideologies trailed after these impossible events like condemned prisoners, as ideologies do when they've had their day.

The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.

Completing a book, it's a little like having a baby.

By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed.

Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

I mean, you can't be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government's policy is benevolent, can you now?

History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.