Inaugurals conventionally start with a history lesson and finish with a prayer.

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.

...and we'll see what happens when we say Yes while this rigor mortis world screams No.

I regard Abraham as my ancestor. Some of the greatest inspiration I have got has come from what we call the Old Testament prophets and what Jews would say "our prophets."

We goofed around a lot and acted silly. It was great working with Mark Wahlberg too. Some off scenes I had with him I was terrified to do, but he was great.

Good and evil go hand in hand, you can't seperate them.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.

When you suffer a loss, there is before the death and after the death - those become your two existences and your two realities.

As one passion begins to fail it is necessary to form another, for the whole art of going through life tolerably is to keep oneself eager about anything.

It's abundantly clear that we already have extraterrestrials living among us, and people are stepping forward who can communicate with them.

A samurai will use a toothpick even though he has not eaten. Inside the skin of a dog, outside the hide of a tiger.