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

For me this is the vital litmus test: no intellectual society can flourish where a Jew feels even slightly uneasy.

I was very fond of Princess Diana. She used to have me over to lunch to ask my advice. I'd give her good advice, and she'd say: 'I entirely agree. Paul, you're so right.' Then she'd go and do the opposite.

His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the degree to which they accepted his.

The Second World War took place not so much because no one won the First, but because the Versailles Treaty did not acknowledge this truth.

Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.

The writer learns to write, in the last resort, only by writing. He must get words onto paper even if he is dissatisfied with them. A young writer must cross many psychological barriers to acquire confidence in his capacity to produce good work-especially his first full-length book-and he cannot do this by staring at a piece of blank paper, searching for the perfect sentence.