But to compare little things with large is a salutary habit; the little thing tells you a little about the large thing

If a conspiracy theory traduces America, then Gore’ll subscribe to it.

With Gore it’s just a fatuous posture. With Noam, I’m sorry to say, it’s heartfelt. He just doesn’t like America.

what Norman Mailer was going on about when he said that the attack would prove salutary, because only ceaseless warfare could maintain the virility of the US male

In Nabokov’s brightly mournful late novella Transparent Things (1972), flighty Julia takes the stolid hero, Hugh Person, to the avant-garde play that everyone is talking about

‘It’s not intellectually respectable, I know. It’s an archaism. All I have are these persistent intuitions.

‘Well I was caught up in that too,’ said Saul. ‘Being a Trot made you feel you had a role in world history. Aiming for something higher than mere Mammon.’

And Christopher, with his extravagant idiolect…

I was sure he wouldn’t be solemn, let alone lachrymose. He wouldn’t be spiritless. But what would he be?

More lissom than any woman has the right to be. But that honking accent. She sounds as haughty, and inbred, as Princess Anne.