Humor is practically the only thing about which the English are utterly serious.

Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society.

It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.

We have now educated ourselves into a state of complete imbecility.

Surely the glory of journalism is its transience.

I think Queen Elisabeth II is a charming woman.

Everything Tolstoy wrote is precious, but I found this final statement of the truth about life as he had come to understand it particularly beautiful and moving. 'That is what I have wanted to say to you, my brothers. Before I died.' So he concludes, giving one a vivid sense of the old man, pen in hand and bent over the paper, his forehead wrinkled into a look of puzzlement very characteristic of him, as though he were perpetually wondering how others could fail to see what was to him so clear - that the law of love explained all mysteries and invalidated all other laws.