By elevating your reading, you will improve your writing or at least tickle your thinking.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home, when he was British Foreign Secretary, said he received the following telegram from an irate citizen: "To hell with you. Offensive letter follows."

Gridlock is great. My motto is, 'Don't just do something. Stand there.'

To 'know your place' is a good idea in politics. That is not to say 'stay in your place' or 'hang on to your place', because ambition or boredom may dictate upward or downward mobility, but a sense of place - a feel for one's own position in the control room-is useful in gauging what you should try to do.

Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.

The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.

To communicate, put your words in order; give them a purpose; use them to persuade, to instruct, to discover, to seduce.