Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.

I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism . . . The only way to react is to get up in the morning and start the day by saying four or five vastly politically incorrect things before breakfast!

Books of quotations ... afford me one of the most undemanding but satisfying forms of reading pleasure.

Authors always take rejection badly. They equate it with infanticide.

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can't now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

A nation that can't remember its dead will soon cease to be worth dying for.