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

Dictatorship is a constant lecture instructing you that your feelings, your thoughts and desires are of no account, that you are a nobody and must live as you are told by other people who desire and think for you

Consistency is a virtue for trains.

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.

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

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn’t play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn.