The House of Lords, an illusion to which I have never been able to subscribe - responsibility without power, the prerogative of the eunuch throughout the ages.

Well I believe in the desirability of an optimal society.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

My work always tried to unite the true with the beautiful but when I had to choose one or the other, I usually chose the beautiful.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.