The late Tom Wicker's biography of Nixon, called 'One of Us, ' is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn't expected to feel.

Cell phones, alas, have pretty much ruined train travel, which I used to love. I could read or even sketch notes for what I was working on.

I have a picture of the Pont Neuf on a wall in my apartment, but i know that Paris is really on the closet shelf, in the box next to the sleeping bag, with the rest of my diaries.

The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact.

Letters had always defeated distance, but with the coming of e-mail, time seemed to be vanquished as well.

Ive always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going.

I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.

To some extent the history of plagiarism is a history of notebooks.

The world's history is constant like the laws of nature and simple like the souls of men. The same conditions continually produce the same results.

If you carve out what you expect, that's how you end up getting disappointed, not living fully in the present.

I'm at my best in a messy, middle-of-the-road muddle.

England expects every man to do his duty

I'm from Wisconsin, and I love snowboarding, hiking, yoga and soccer.

I need to run every day. If I don't I feel cheated.

I'd like to live like a poor man with a lot of money.

I should like to see any kind of man, distinguishable from a gorilla, that some good and even pretty woman could not shape a husband out of.

Since no one is always right, always being right is really a role model for his children feeling inadequate.

Sometimes, less is more.