The most evil person I ever met was a toss-up between Pablo Picasso and the publisher-crook Robert Maxwell.

My grandfather used to say, "Learn to like art, music and literature deeply and passionately. They will be your friends when things are bad". It is true: at this time of year, when days are short and dark, and one hardly dares to open the newspapers, I turn, not vainly either, to the great creators of the past for distraction, solace and help.

If you depart from moral absolutes, you go into a bottomless pit. Communism and Nazism were catastrophic evils which both derived from moral relativism. Their differences were minor compared to their similarities.

The word 'meaningful' when used today is nearly always meaningless.

Scanning the newspapers and absorbing with a mixture of incredulity and indignation the enormities they report, I conclude that what England lacks today is, quite simply, sense.

Euphemism is a human device to conceal the horrors of reality.

As a child I found railroad stations exciting, mysterious, and even beautiful, as indeed they often were.