Four times I was honked at for having the temerity to proceed through town without the benefit of metal..

Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder..

Your pillow alone may be home to 40 million bed mites. (To them your head is just one large oily bon-bon). And don't think a clean pillow-case will m….

In the countryside, litter doesn't have a friend. It doesn't have anybody who's saying, 'Wait a minute, this is really starting to get out of control….

A world without newspapers or a world where the newspapers are purely electronic and you read them on a screen is not a very appealing world..

It's hard not to be kind of pessimistic about human beings generally, because we do tend to mess things up. If you just look at the history of extinc….

When I was growing up I used to think that the best thing about coming from Des Moines was that it meant you didn't come from anywhere else in Iowa. ….

Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time aston….

You can be a scientist and believe in god: the two can go hand in hand..

Very little of what America does is actually bad, and I don't think it ever does anything anywhere that is intentionally bad. I mean, sometimes we ma….

It was one of those sumptuous days when the world is full of autumn muskiness and tangy, crisp perfection: vivid blue sky, deep green fields, leaves ….

If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anesthetic to the sound of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish….

Everywhere throughout New England you find old, tumbledown field walls, often in the middle of the deepest, most settled- looking woods- a reminder o….

At the foot of the mountain, the park ended and suddenly all was squalor again. I was once more struck by this strange compartmentalization that goes….

The people are immensely likable— cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted, and unfailingly obliging. Their cities are safe and clean and nearly always buil….

There is the odd exception, like Albert Einstein, but as a breed, scientists tend not be very good at presenting themselves..

When you tell an Iowan a joke, you can see a kind of race going on between his brain and his expression..

Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up..

So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one that gives me free tape and prompt s….

Being a pessimist is just such a gloomy way of looking at things, so I have to hope for the best - life wouldn't be worth living if we didn't have ho….

I hadn't realized quite how extraordinary Charles Lindbergh's achievement was in flying the Atlantic alone. He had never flown over open water before….