It was lovely to see cynicism in one so young. It positively restored his faith in human nature.

But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven.

The French just said he was a damned nuisance. Or they would have had they the good fortune to speak English. Instead being French they were forced to say it in their own language.

There's nothing so attractive as a blank slate. Take one attractive man, slap on a thick coat of daydream, and voila, the perfect man. With absolutely no resemblance to reality.

Old books exert a strange fascination for me -- their smell, their feel, their history; wondering who might have owned them, how they lived, what they felt.

Tell them I have the headache--no, the plague! I need something nice and contagious.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that one only comes up with clever, cutting remarks long after the other party is happily slumbering away.