In novels and autobiographies, the first positive move that the immigrant makes towards assimilation is to buy himself a suit of city clothes.

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.

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.

That's a misconception, Lennie. The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet.

You know, without a doubt, that surrender is the only option to fulfill whatever you are attempting.

Just a few more years and then we'll join the circus.

Everything is sorrow for the wise.

I have not been short of invitations to other clubs and have been received more warmly by Everton than I have by Liverpool.

People will call you anything. It's up to you either to pick up the phone or not.

A fan can be able to say what he wants, do what he wants - he pays his money.

Everyone and everything is in some degree or other our teacher.

Keen appetite And quick digestion wait on you and yours.

The 22nd Amendment should probably be modified to say two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime.