I have never been able to write with anything more than the left hand of my mind; the right hand has always been engaged in something to do with personal relationships. I don't complain, because I think my left hand's power, as much as it has, is due to its knowledge of what my right hand is doing.

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

Great music is in a sense serene; it is certain of the values it asserts.

Margaret Thatcher has one great advantage - she is a daughter of the people and looks trim, as the daughter of the people desire to be. Shirley Williams has such an advantage over her because she's a member of the upper-middle class and can achieve the kitchen-sink revolutionary look that one cannot get unless one has been to a really good school.

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

If it be ungentlemanly to kiss and tell, it is still further from gentlemanliness to pray and tell.

It isn't only living people who die, it is great stretches of living, which can die even when the people who lived there still exist.