The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.

Writing for a newspaper is like running a revolutionary war. You go to battle not when you are ready, but when action offers itself.

Dying can't be all that difficult-up to now everyone has managed to do it.

I was thinking that surgeons had to be the happiest people on earth. To cut people up and get paid for it-that's happiness, I told myself.

It all comes down to who does the dishes.

The essence of spirit ... was to choose the thing which did not better one's position but made it more perilous. That was why the world he knew was poor, for it insisted morality and caution were identical.

What's the use of being a writer if you can't irritate a great many people?