“We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.”

“Old age is far more than white hair, wrinkles, the feeling that it is too late and the game finished, that the stage belongs to the rising generations. The true evil is not the weakening of the bod...”

“An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along.”

“Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy person has no time to form.”

“Self-pity comes so naturally to all of us. The most solid happiness can be shaken by the compassion of a fool.”

“The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.”

“War is what happens when language fails.”

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

“The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.”

“IQ's are a combination of eyes, and queues. Would you wait in line to see my goat show? Of course you wouldn't, because the line is invisible.”

“He couldn't tell that this was one of those occasions a man never forgets: a small cicatrice had been made on the memory, a wound that would ache whenever certain things combined - the taste of gin...”

“Parenting is no sport for perfectionists.”

“It is naive to think that sport is above politics, that any kind of level playing field exists, or that sport allows the world to put its problems on hold.”

“Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”