Although Lucifer had accelerated the process, it has begun decades earlier, when the coming of the jet age had triggered an explosion of global tourism

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn't have to be...

The world was too full of wastrels and waifs, sycophants and spies - all of whom put words to the wrong use, who made everything that was said or written suspect.

it's easier finding a virgin in a whorehouse than an honest politician.

It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves. In the wild struggle for...

The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to. "What do they sacrifice?" asked Shadow. "Their time, mostly," said Lucy. "Sometimes each other."

I didn't ask why anybody would want to risk the electric two-step on the tracks because, as police, all three of us knew that there wasn't anything so stupid that somebody wouldn't try it sooner or...

One of the compensations for wearing a uniform and earning less money than an equally talented man can make in the real world is the off chance of being killed.

Let's be friends based on mutual hate. - Wallace Wells Listen to this, okay? Just listen. You hear that? That's market bacon hitting the pan. Today a child is born unto us, and his name will be bacon....

They'd only been here for a couple of years, only employed twenty people all told, their two-year tax holiday was ending. Place

It was a skill useful to lawyers, and no man in all English history was more the lawyer than Coke. He personified a profession considered both so influential and so dubious that in 1372 the House of...

He who does not work does not eat, certainly, but he who works no longer lives.

Men bow before the power of genius; they hate it, and try to slander it, because genius does not divide the spoil; but if genius persists, they bow before it.

A society where you're not allowed to blow your own trumpet is so much more nuanced, sophisticated and interesting than the grim world of literalism that's being ushered in.

No one in their right mind would attempt to salvage it, but there were plenty of people not in their right mind. The world was full of them, more produced every minute.

What white Americans do not face when they regard a Negro reality - the fact that life is tragic. Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for...

almost fanatically, began to see another man, and although she still clung on to Williams for his money, it was quite obvious to him that she didn't love him

There was something to be said for dying before you ended up in incontinence pads, watching an endless loop of reruns of Friends.

He has added inches and fullness to his beard since his last visit. I'll say no more.

The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments.

From a certain height, everyone looks the same - men, women, villains, kings - as if rank and fortune were simply an accident of perspective.

These young men, in other words, represented a variety of types, but one thing they had in common was that they'd all given up on committing positively to anything in life. This was not their fault,...

New things, new ideas arrived and strutted their stuff and were vilified by some and then lo! that which had been a monster was suddenly totally important to the world.

Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and an Internet connection can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be.

All the countries had enough to pay for these enormous protective walls, and nobody thought about war. They only armed themselves 'just in case' – because rich people like to see steel walls around...

I'm not so sure innocence exists anymore.

Public justice is the greatest kind of show, my brother. Drama. Suspense. And best of all education en masse.

Utopia is the process of making a better world, the name for one path history can take, a dynamic, tumultuous, agonizing process, with no end. Struggle forever.

You are not like the others. I've seen a few. I know. When I talk to you, you look at me. Last night, when I mentioned the moon, you looked at it. The others never would. The others would turn away,...

If money is a science, then it is a dark science... it has gone on developing... by its own rules