If I do not do sensible things about investments I shall spend my old age in a workhouse, where nobody will understand my jokes.

Bad art is maintained by the neurotic, who is deadly afraid of authentic art because it inspires him to go on living, and he is terrified of life.

All men should have a drop of treason in their veins, if nations are not to go soft like so many sleepy pears.

I had a glorious father, I had no father at all.

Birds sat on the telegraph wires that spanned the river as the black notes sit on a staff of music.

Once a secret society establishes itself within an open society, there is no end to the hideous mistrust it must cause.

All good biography, as all good fiction, comes down to the study of original sin, of our inherent disposition to choose death when we ought to choose life.