There are two kinds of travelers. There is the kind who goes to see what there is to see, and the kind who has an image in his head and goes out to accomplish it. The first visitor has an easier time, but I think the second visitor sees more.

I still think the best classic meal in New York is a coffee-shop breakfast - you sort of can't skip it.

I think that we're always drawn - particularly sophisticated people - are always drawn to the idea of simplicity.

Paris, on the other hand, looked exactly as it was supposed to look. It wore its heart on its sleeve, and the strange thing was that the heart it wore so openly was in other ways so closed-mysterious, uninviting.

The scale and the brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life.

Often the block [in writing] comes from the wall of words that keep out the simplicity of sense.

Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share. You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.