No one who claims this to be a small world has ever flown across the Pacific.

Like many highly educated people, I didn't have much in the way of actual skills.

Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings.

It was as if the sensory overload that is American life had somehow led to sensory deprivation, a gilded weariness, where everything is permitted and nothing appreciated.

Personally I regard idling as a virtue, but civilized society holds otherwise.

The gift of sobriety is clarity and a sense of connection - and travel only enhances that.

Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.

I burp like everyone else and I'm promiscuous.

Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur.

Oh, what lies there are in kisses.

Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe.

When I'm hell-bent on something, there's no way around it. I can be a very stubborn.

The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins.

You are the architect of the memories that others will have about you.

You're a sovereign as a citizen. If you're not involved in your government, you're not doing your job. In the long run that's very bad for the Republic.

The nature of democracy is such that when there's - there'll be revulsion, obviously, towards - that's never going to happen again.