The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

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

It is not as if farming brought a great improvement in living standards either. A typical hunter-gatherer enjoyed a more varied diet and consumed more protein and calories than settled people, and took in five times as much viatmin C as the average person today.

It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect... It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players - more if they are moderately restless.

Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon, and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.

I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.

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. By Iowa standards, Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.