I was a pretty angry kid, and I got into military history largely as a way to vent my own anger. As I got older it narrowed down to a more specific focus on individual violence. I'm just trying to understand where it came from.

Scientists' minds may jump around like amorous toads, but they do seem to accept such behavior in one another.

I, like most of my friends, couldn't believe I bought a mountain called Misery Mountain, because it was so appropriate.

So if it seems that some of what I'll have to say in the pages to come doesn't reflect the mellowing of age, that's only because I've never found that life and memories respond to time the way that tobacco does.

People would rather be deceived than have the truth cause them anxiety

She has that quality, does the Hudson, as I imagine all great rivers do: the deep, abiding sense that those activities what take place on shore among human beings are of the moment, passing, and aren't the stories by way of which the greater tale of this planet will, in the end, be told.

It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.