Seattle is this curious liberal island.

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.

The power of fiction is a great thing. But, after all, reality is just a little more important.

Max?' he asked.'Yeah?''...What are you doing?''Shooting people.

The young, in their innocence, are often wise and capable of teaching the old.

I'm no less rock 'n' roll than anyone else, I'm pretty normal.

I think it's really important for actors to have another creative outlet, or for anyone, really.

It is very important for young people keep their sense of wonder and keep asking why.

I'm proud of where I come from. A lot of people leave Mississippi, and their claim to fame is somewhere else. But I have so many moral values that made me the person I am now.

You have to be yourself. Stay true to who and what you are. And if people still like you, that's great! If they don't, that's their problem.

Once people see that you improve you life if you are educated, then education becomes a valuable tool and people want it.

In antiquity the sage kings recognized that men's nature is bad and that their tendencies were not being corrected and their lawlessness controlled.