Evil may be 'unscientific' but so is a song or a smile.

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.

Man eternally tries to get back to an organic past that has slipped just beyond his reach.

There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speech. If you approach me at a bus stop and murmur Thou still unravished bride of quietness, then I am instantly aware that I am in the presence of the literary.

If it is true that we need a degree of certainty to get by, it is also true that too much of the stuff can be lethal.

People do evil things because they are evil. Some people are evil in the way that some things are coloured indigo. They commit their evil deeds not to achieve some goal, but just because of the sort of people they are.