Everyone who is not happy must be shot.

As our Governments spin, lie and lose their credibility, the electorate simply shrugs and looks the other way.

I think that all writers feel alienated. ... I know that I do. ... I still feel, as I think most creative people do, absolutely isolated.

I taught principally German language and literature at Eton. But any master with private pupils must be prepared to teach anything they ask for. That can be as diverse as the early paintings of Salvador Dali or how bumblebees manage to fly.

To possess another language is to possess another soul.

I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information, the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skillful people.

A dead man is the worst enemy alive, I thought. You can't alter his power over you. You can't alter what you love or owe. And it's too late to ask him for his absolution. He has beaten you all ways.