To choose one’s victims, to prepare one’s plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then to go to bed … there is nothing sweeter in the world.

Josef Stalin (1879–1953) Georgian revolutionary and Soviet dictator

(Attributed)

In Robert Conquest, “Lenin’s Guffaw,” New Republic (15 Sep 1986).  Remark to colleague before signing almost 40,000 death warrants.