“In the tumult of great events, solitude was what I hoped for. Now it is what I love. How is it possible to be contented with anything else when one has come face to face with history?”

He who laughs last didn’t get the joke.

A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.

The true statesman is the one who is willing to take risks.

Whereas ordinary officers must be content with behaving correctly in front of their men, the great leaders have always carefully stage-managed their effects.

No, I’m not talking about the Russians; I mean the Germans. In spite of everything, to have pushed so far!

Deliberation is a function of the many; action is the function of one.

I wouldn’t mind dying for France, but not for Air France.

The future does not belong to men.

I am not bad, thank you. But don’t worry, one of these days I shall certainly die.

France cannot be France without greatness.

Once upon a time there was an old country, wrapped up in habit and caution. We have to transform our old France into a new country and marry it to its time.

When I want to know what France thinks, I ask myself.

One cannot govern with ‘buts’.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.

Difficulty attracts the characterful man, for it is by grasping it that he fulfils himself.

I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.

Edward helped, making faces every so often at the raw ingredients-human food was mildly repulsive to him.

Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.

You should have seen his face when I started taking my clothes off. Priceless.

I have ‘Very Rare’ tatted on my face.

I’d date a fan as long as she didn’t scream in my face.

The job is to ask questions-it always was-and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

I don’t see how you could get used to people screaming in your face, and anyone who says different is lying.