Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style.

The Falklands held a mirror up to our own islands, and it reflected, in brilliantly sharp focus, all our injured belittlement, our sense of being beleaguered, neglected and misunderstood.

Travel. It was an intransitive verb. It didn't involve any destinations. It was going to the going's sake, to be anywhere but where you were, with motion itself as the only object.

Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony.

The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude facts at your feet.

In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air.

Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose.

Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free from a mud berth and swaying in its chains.

Good travel books are novels at heart.

In novels and autobiographies, the first positive move that the immigrant makes towards assimilation is to buy himself a suit of city clothes.

God why do I storm heaven for answers that are already in my heart? Every grace I need has already been given me. Oh lead me to the Beyond within.

Using the greatest business people in the world, which America has, I am going to turn our bad trade agreements into great trade agreements.

It's endlessly interesting to be organizing and hearing possible solutions or thinking of possible solutions and how to put efforts together. It makes everything else boring, actually.

Being the most striking manifestation of the art of metal structures by which our engineers have shown in Europe, it [the Eiffel Tower] is one of the most striking of our modern national genius.

Purposeful action is thus the goal of all that is truly educative.

Books are a better investment in our future than bullets. Books, not bullets, will pave the path towards peace and prosperity.

Declare what you honestly want and live that vision fearlessly.

I'm a nut for Bach as a composer.

The Ego is an exquisite instrument. Enjoy it, use it--just don't get lost in it.

Perhaps a sense of possessing needs to come to come before a sense of genuine sharing.