I’m all for bringing back the birch, but onlybetween consenting adults.

Ideally, the writer needs no audience other than the few who understand. It is immodest and greedy to want more.

If satire is to be effective, the audience must be aware of the thing satirized.

I'm a born-again atheist.

In a society like ours, politics is improvisation. To the artful dodger rather than the true believer goes the prize.

In large Victorian houses with many rooms and heavy doors, the occupants could be mysterious and exciting to one another in a way that those who live in rackety developments can never hope to be. Not even the lust of a Lord Byron could survive the fact of Levittown.

It is curious how often one prefers his enemies to his friends.

It is ironic that a nation that has never experienced a coup d'etat should be so obsessed with the idea of conspiracy.

It is natural for men to want power. But to seek power actively takes a temperament baffling to both the simple and the wise. The simple cannot fathom how any man would dare presume to prevail, while the wise are amazed that any reasonable man would want the world, assuming he could get it.

It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.