“One of the marks of a truly great mind, I had discovered, is the ability to feign stupidity on demand.”

One that cackles at these capers and another that never gets much beyond a rather jaded and self-conscious smile, like the Mona Lisa.

Liberals have always been the most fervent Imperialists.

Not very good with death? Father was a military man, and military men lived with death; lived for death; lived on death. To a professional soldier, oddly enough, death was life.

I had thought for years, probably 30 or 40 years, that it would be a lot of fun to try my hand at a classic English mystery novel.

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother’s house was filled with English books.

Whenever I’m out-of-doors and find myself wanting to have a first-rate think.

During a long career in TV broadcasting, I spent a lot of time contributing to other people’s creations.

Anyone who knew the word slattern was worth cultivating as a friend.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven.

The spectrum on the list is very broad. It includes leftists who think that whiny liberals should be stuffed in a sack and drowned.

If poisons were ponies, I’d put my money on cyanide.

Children have much more finely tuned senses of justice, morals, and ethics. They are much more Platonic: children are symmetrical, before we begin to fragment them with our own nonsensical ideas and squelch their natural joy in knowledge.

I love that form very much because the reader is so familiar with all of the types of characters that are in there that they already identify with the book.

I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

Except I’m aware that as a writer you can’t get away with as much writing for children as you can with adults.

To be most effective, flattery is always best applied with a trowel.

The recent period has been marked by a transformation to an economy that is more productive as competitive forces become increasingly intense and new technologies raise the efficiency of our businesses…

If we fail to act soon, the scars of a major nuclear disaster will mark our immediate and distant future.

I’m not saying that people should live in unrepentant sin. I’m not saying that that’s a mark of a mature believer at all.

The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny and that’s why it is so perilous and so burdened with a kind of horrifying stage fright.

The history of human consciousness is marked by the battle between the old awareness.

Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent.

In those silent-film days it was the mark of a villain.

Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.