He had the sort of face that makes you realize God does have a sense of humor.

Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up.

Everything seems to be designed for the benefit of the automobile and not the benefit of the human being.

A cough so robust that I tapped into two new seams of phlegm.

Des Moines is like your typical American city; it's just these concentric circles of malls, built outward from the city.

If you were designing an organism to look after life in our lonely cosmos, to monitor where it is going and keep a record of where it has been, you wouldn't choose human beings for the job. But here's an extrememly salient point: we have been chosen, by fate or Providence or whatever you wish to call it. As far as we can tell, we are the best there is. We may be all there is. It's an unnerving thought that we may be the living universe's supreme achievement and its worst nightmare simultaneously.

Traveling makes you realize what an immeasurably nice place much of America could be if only people possessed the same instinct for preservation as they do in Europe.