“... embarrass yourself. You get the distinct feeling Kelley disapproves of Sinatra’s fourth wife, Barbara, because she insisted on giving millions rather than thousands to certain charities, such as a programme for sexually abused children. A lose-lose situation: keep your money to yourself and you’re pilloried as the unfeeling rich; spend all your time ...”

“... recognised by contemporaries: ‘one of the great minds and imaginations of our day’, Edmund Wilson wrote in the 1920s, ‘absolutely comparable’ to ‘the Nietzsches, the Tolstoys, the Wagners and the Ibsens of a previous generation’.All literary magnitudes are finite. In the case of great writers, it is understandable that their vices should ...”

“... intimacy with him – will not find it in Two Lives. (Perhaps something has yet to emerge: Barbara Will, a Dartmouth professor, is presently working on a book called Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ and the Vichy Dilemma.) The more Malcolm reveals of his history, for example, the more loathsome Faÿ sounds. Animated by her ...”