Scenery can be a violent stimulant.

I'd rather be at the end of a dying tradition, which I admire, than at the beginning of a tradition which I deplore.

London, how could one ever be tired of it?

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.

Nothing succeeds, they say, like success. And certainly nothing fails like failure.

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

There would be more genuine rejoicing at the discovery of a complete new novel by Jane Austen than any other literary discovery, short of a new major play by Shakespeare.