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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, you should have a chat with your boyfriend, clarify your desires. Hate to break the news, but, uh, he’s cheatin’ on you. Tell him I said my dog kisses better than him and he hits like a girl.

Remember that you are all people and that all people are you.

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought but action.

There's nothing more debilitating about a disability than the way people treat you over it.

I cannot hold with those who wish to put down the insignificant chatter of the world.

Communication with the dead is only a little more difficult than communication with some of the living.

The Europeans must now honor their commitments. That is the position that France is defending.

Hustle is waking up the day before you die and realising you gave it your all.

Diligent accumulation of personal wealth is not inherently ungodly so long as it is complemented by equally diligent distribution of personal wealth.

Living substance conquers the frenzy of destruction only in the ecstasy of procreation.