You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave.

In Manhattan, when you're out of the front door, you're on, and you have to be ready to smile and speak to people.

The world now seems a stunningly ignoble place. It has not really grown all that much worse but appears to have done so because we know so much more about it than we did.

Manners are a way of getting what you want without appearing to be an absolute swine.

In fact I try to spend at least one, if not two days without ever leaving my room. Because if I didn't, when would I recharge my batteries?

I simply haven't the nerve to imagine a being, a force, a cause which keeps the planets revolving in their orbits and then suddenly stops in order to give me a bicycle with three speeds.

Europeans have quarrelled since the beginning of time.