Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with

You tell me your favorite novelists and I'll tell you whom you vote for, or whether you vote at all.

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

To be great is to assume great concerns.

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.