World War II put feminism on hold for a long time; the men went away to fight, a lot of women in those years got jobs both in teaching and in factories - at all social levels - which they enjoyed very much. A lot of them were quite happy during the war.

Our desire to conform is greater than our respect for objective facts.

You have to be careful what you imagine, because the act of imagining is the act of encouraging yourself to be a certain kind of person.

I've always thought that very few people grow old as admirably as academics. At least books never let them down.

My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the United States and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world.

London, how could one ever be tired of it?

The human mind can bear plenty of reality but not too much intermittent gloom.