Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.

The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.

When evil is allowed to compete with good, evil has an emotional populist appeal that wins out unless good men and women stand as a vanguard against abuse.

Politically, the weakness of the argument has always been that those who choose the lesser evil forget very quickly that they chose evil.

This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.

The greatest enemy of authority, therefore, is contempt, and the surest way to undermine it is laughter.

One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.

There is a strange interdependence between thoughtlessness and evil.

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous.

Only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.

She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape.

We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

We are not like dogs who are kind of "What am I going to eat today? Oh, there is a rabbit; I am going to go chase it."

I don't know when I made that active decision to be a writer or to try to write, but I know I always liked storytelling.

I have done so many things in my life," she said to the mirror. "Evil things, perhaps. But never unattentively, never wastefully...was I wrong?

There is no more sure tie between friends than when they are united in their objects and wishes.

A grandmother is a person with too much wisdom to let that stop her from making a fool of herself over her grandchildren.

Traveling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

I wish somebody had told me love does not die, that we can continue to receive and give love after death.

but, in reality, there is no such thing as an exact science.