“To choose one's victims, to prepare one's plans minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed ... there is nothing sweeter in the world. - J. V. Stalin”

“Death solves all problems - no man, no problem. - J. V. Stalin, 1918”

“If you are afraid of wolves, keep out of the woods. - J. V. Stalin, 1936”

“Gratitude", he said, quoting Stalin, "is a dog's disease.”

“No one can really claim to know politics properly until he has stayed up all night writing a speech for delivery the following day. While the world sleeps, the orator paces by lamplight, wondering what madness ever brought him to this occupation in the first place. Arguments are prepared and discarded. The exhausted mind ceases to have any coherent grip upon the purpose of the enterprise, so that often--usually an hour or two after midnight--there comes a point where failing to turn up, feigning illness, and hiding at home seem the only realistic options. And then, somehow, just asa panic and humiliation beckon, the parts cohere, and there it is: a speech. A second-rate orator now retires gratefully to bed. A Cicero stays up and commits it to memory.”

“It was an unnatural time to be awake, ... It meant nothing good. He associated it with emergency, bereavement, conspiracy, flight; the sad skulk away at the end of a one-night affair.”

“The destination of the journey could not be altered, only the manner in which one approached it - whether one chose to walk erect or to be dragged complaining through the dust.”