Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

Perhaps my greatest wisdom is the knowledge that I do not know.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think youcontrol it.

You don't even know where I'm going.""I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere.

What I am mourning is perhaps not worth saving, but I regret its loss nevertheless.

...people don’t take trips—trips take people.

But then I realize that even if I did have a soul, it’s not as though someone else would be there. It would only be more of me.

Since violence is largely a male pastime, cultures that empower women tend to move away from the glorification of violence and are less likely to breed dangerous subcultures of rootless young men.

A politician is a man in his natural state

Like the culture that created me, I am receding into the past at a rate of knots. Soon I'll need a whole row of footnotes if anybody under thirty-five is going to comprehend the least thing I say.

There's a generation of people I think without a strong connection to family, to religion, to civic duty. They have a real disassociation from the problems of the world.

I'm too careless. I don't put out enough effort. I'm tired.

I protest against any absolute conclusion.

But it is at home and not in public that one should wash ones dirty linen. [Fr., Car c'est en famille, ce n'est pas en public, qu'un lave son linge sale.]

In my experience, the worst thing you can do to an important problem is to discuss it.

I listen to a mixture of old jazz, contemporary, pop, some world beat stuff and various odds and ends.