"It’s still quite something to be told, by the armed, hoarse enforcers of a murder-based regime, that you are yourself “a deadman on leave.” And the claustrophobic world in which he had to live for some years was a prefiguration of the world in which we all, to a greater or lesser extent, live now. I mean to say a world in which a fanatical religion, which makes absolutist claims for itself and promises to supply – even to be – a total solution to all problems – furthermore regards itself is so pure as to be above criticism."