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

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.

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.

Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more or less stops there.

Life's exciting seas cannot be sailed unless you're ready to leave the port behind.

I like TV on demand and Cheetos.

Goals. There's not telling what you can do when you get inspired by them.

He frowns. "A dance with the carnivorous Felicity? Why? Has she eaten all the other available gentlemen?

A great sentiment can be rendered immediately. Dream on it and look for the simplest form in which you can express it.

But tell me, this physician of whom you were just speaking, is he a moneymaker, an earner of fees, or a healer of the sick?

I don't mind UFO's and ghost stories, it's just that I tend to give value to the storyteller rather than to the story itself.

Purpose in the human being is a much more complex phenomenon than what used to be called will power.

The power of the present moment is so immense it is capable - when lived in fully - of destroying forever every past mistake and regret.

The anxiety of most parents in seeing their sons and daughters enlist does not lie only in the fear of the physical dangers they may encounter.