“The greatest ideas are the simplest.”

“The greatest pleasure is not - say - sex or geometry. It is just understanding. And if you can get people to understand their own humanity - well, that's the job of the writer.”

“Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”

“I do like people to read the books twice, because I write my novels about ideas which concern me deeply and I think are important, and therefore I want people to take them seriously. And to read it twice of course is taking it seriously.”

“The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.”

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

“This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun.”