The United Nations emerged as a temple of official good intentions, a place where governments might - without abating their transgressions - go to church; a place made remote - by agreed untruth and procedural complexity, and by tedium itself - from the risk of intense public involvement.

I think that one is constantly startled by the things that appear before you on the page when you're writing.

Madness might sometimes give access to a kind of knowledge. But was not a guarantee.

Italians are never punctual; the café, the convenient place to wait, absolves them from that. There is no question of hanging about, no looking lost and unwanted or even disreputable, as there is in hotel lobbies or the foyers of restaurants. One just sits and enjoys the scene, and waits.

Great literature is like moral leadership; everyone deplores the lack of it, but there is a tendency to prefer it from the safely dead.

For most people it's easier to support an eminent person in deserved disgrace than an obscure one who has been wronged.

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please.