The people look forbidding, solemn, marked by that impossible ideal, Communism, which, like Christianity, seemed to demand too much of humanity and, falling into the wrong hands, led too easily to horrible brutality.

I had inherited what my father called the art of the advocate, or the irritating habit of looking for the flaw in any argument.

Farce is tragedy played at a thousand revolutions per minute.

What obsesses a writer starting out on a lifetime's work is the panic-stricken search for a voice of his own.

Check-ups are, in my experience, a grave mistake; all they do is allow the quack of your choice to tell you that you have some sort of complaint that you were far happier not knowing about.

We don't know much about the human conscience, except that it is soluble in alcohol.

We may not be the creme de la creme, but we are the creme de la scum.