A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.

It's easy to forget what intelligence consists of: luck and speculation. Here and there a windfall, here and there a scoop.

The fact that you can only do a little is no excuse for doing nothing.

America has entered one of its periods of historical madness, but this is the worst I can remember: worse than McCarthyism, worse than the Bay of Pigs and in the long term potentially more disastrous than the Vietnam War.

In the hands of politicians grand designs achieve nothing but new forms of the old misery.

I can't think of anybody worse to live with.

When it's going well [writing] goes terribly fast. It isn't at all surprising to write a chapter in a day, which for me is about twenty-two pages. When it's going badly, it isn't really going badly; it's just the beginning.