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.