Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?

The De Bernières were very military. I broke the military tradition but I was terribly proud of my father being a soldier.

When you fall in love, it is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake, and then it subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots are become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

Did you know that childhood is the only time in our lives when insanity is not only permitted to us, but expected?

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.

The trouble with fulfilling your ambitions is you think you will be transformed into some sort of archangel and you're not. You still have to wash your socks.

Fascism is fundamentally and at bottom an aesthetic conception, and . . . it is your function as creators of beautiful things to portray with the greatest efficacy the sublime beauty and inevitable reality of the Fascist ideal.