“One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that.”

“I don’t trust compliments. I’ve been getting them for years. Sometimes I deserve them, sometimes I didn’t. But generally when people give you compliments there’s one of two things wrong with them. Either they’re false, or what’s worse is they’re sincere. They really mean the compliment. And then they’re offering you their loyalty. And I’m kind of a stingy… Well, I don’t necessarily want to give all that loyalty back. So either way, let’s skip the compliments.”

“You can indulge your righteous rage but the things it comes out of are pretty cheap. The trick is to make yourself an instrument of your own policy. Whether you like it or not, that's the highest effectiveness man has achieved.”

“I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.”

“Love was love, one could find it with anyone, one could find it anywhere. It was just that you could never keep it. Not unless you were ready to die for it.”

“You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant.”

“I could not begin to mourn Deborah or my mind would ride off with me. There was nothing so delicate in all the world as one's last touch of control.”