I am never happier than when I am alone in a foreign city; it is as if I had become invisible.

One of the uncovenanted benefits of living for a long time is that, having so many more dead than living friends, death can appear as a step backwards into the joyous past.

She did not so much cook as assassinate food.

All pornography is to a degree sadistic - inevitably.

Perhaps this is in the end what most marriages are - gentleness, memory, and habit.

In France, even heresy rapidly hardens into dogma.

... the whole of society in Washington is to some degree political. It is like no other capital city known to me, in that political thinking, the whole business, technical and personal, of politics, is not diluted by an equal interest in art, industry, amusement, anything you like. I don't meant that these are non-existent in Washington -- only that they are subdued to the ruling passion.