Every writer has his writing technique - what he can and can't do to describe something like war or history. I'm not good at writing about those things but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.

To describe happiness is to diminish it.

You speak of Lord Byron and me there is this great difference between us. He describes what he sees I describe what I imagine. Mine is the hardest task.

A battle lost or won is easily described understood and appreciated but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection as well as observation to appreciate it.

It is not a God just and good but a devil under the name of God that the Bible describes.

I don't try to describe the future. I try to prevent it.