...and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that's really what history mostly is: masses of people ….

You may find that your parents are the most delightful people, but you don't want to live with them..

I can't imagine there has ever been a more gratifying time or place to be alive than America in the 1950s. No country had ever known such prosperity..

Coming back to your native land after an absence of many years is a surprisingly unsettling business, a little like waking from a long coma. Time, yo….

Britain still has the most reliably beautiful countryside of anywhere in the world. I would hate to be part of the generation that allowed that to be….

I'm definitely an American, because I grew up here. But I've lived very happily in Britain..

To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a ho….

18th century scientists, the French in particular, seldom did things simply if an absurdly demanding alternative was available..

Life just wants to be; but it doesn't want to be much..

I have a small tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with meand pull out for purposes of privateamusement. It's a weather forecast from theWestern….

Those who sniff decay in every shift of sense or alteration of usage do the language no service. Too often for such people the notion of good English….

A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm..

Not writing the same kind of book over and over again is to me the real pleasure of what I do..

Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead..

Before, prior to. There is no difference between these two except length and a certain affectedness on the part of 'prior to.' To paraphrase Bernstei….

I have long known that it is part of God's plan for me to spend a little time with each of the most stupid people on earth..

Hardly anyone ever leaves. This is because Des Moines is the most powerful hypnotic known to man. Outside town there is a big sign that says, WELCOME….

By the time I had finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where th….

Beulah has a husband?' I know. It's a miracle. There can't be more than two people on the planet who'd be willing to sleep with her, and here we are ….

Our instinct may be to see the impossibility of tracking everything down as frustrating, dispiriting, perhaps even appalling, but it can just as well….

I see litter as part of a long continuum of anti-social behaviour..