“Write. Don't talk about writing. Don't tell me about your wonderful story ideas. Don't give me a bunch of 'somedays'. Plant your ass and scribble, type, keyboard. If you have any talent at all it w...”

“I'm a bad man. I need to understand the past. It illuminates the present.”

“I'm an incurable romantic. The essence of romance is an unshakable conviction that next time will be different.”

“One's own yesterday is a ghost that will not be laid down.”

“There are no self-proclaimed villains, only regiments of self-proclaimed saints. Victorious historians rule where good or evil lies.”

“I am haunted by the clear knowledge that, in the end, evil always triumphs.”

“Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.”

“Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constituitionalism and legality, the belief in 'the law' as something above the state and above the individual, something which i...”

“It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality”

“Youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.”

“Youth is like having a big plate of candy. Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it al...”

“The secret of remaining young is never to have an emotion that is unbecoming.”