And nothing gave him more faith in the existence of an afterlife than the inexorable sarcasm of fate .

We are entering the Dark Ages, my friend, but this time there will be lots of neon, and screen savers, and street lighting.

He was just one of those Englishmen who was always saying silly things to sound less pompous, and pompous things to sound less silly.

In the Dodge City of romantic love, crowded with betrayal, abandonment and rejection, it was better to fire first than to take the risk of being gunned down.

In England, art was much less likely to be mentioned in polite society than sexual perversions or methods of torture.

There seemed to be no one in a position of power, from the Vatican to Wall Street, from Parliament to Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, who could think of anything better to do than abuse it....

Detachment is what interests me, seeing how people couldn’t have been any other way, how they were the product of forces that they had no control over.

Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars?

He found her pretty in a bewildered, washed-out way, but it was her restlessness that aroused him, the quiet exasperation of a woman who longs to throw herself into something significant, but cannot find what it is.

Rome wasn’t deconstructed in a day.