Quotes from Simon Leys

Whenever people wonder "What is the truth?" usually it is because the truth is just under their noses—but it would be very inconvenient to acknowledge it.

Mao has never accepted the failure of the "Great Leap". As one of the texts reproduced below demonstrates, he would have preferred to see China perish from famine rather than readjust his own vision or recognize his mistakes.

Had Don Quixote been simply and plainly mad, or had he indulged in a protracted game of self-deception and play-acting, we should not be talking of him now, Van Doren observes—"We are talking of him because we suspect that, in the end, he did become a knight.

The need to bring down to our own wretched level, to deface, to deride and debunk any splendour that is towering above us, is probably the saddest urge of human nature.

it is only a very rare artist that is as good as his art.

One may say without exaggeration that Les Misérables triggered War and Peace.[23] Giants breed giants.

it is only n very rare artist that is as good as his art.

Let us admit it, to irritate idiots actually is enjoyable.

timeless (and therefore untimely) truth.

the indignation of the patron in a restaurant who, having been served caviar on toast, complained that the jam had a funny taste of fish.

On Waugh) As a protective device against the bruising contact of life, he was determined to see events and people as a fction from which he was separate.

On Waugh) ...and his capability to cut himself off from reality in order to become a detached spectator of his own predicament. The same mechanism of imagination which produce feelings of panic, can also - if guaided by forceful will - generate couradge.