When helicopters were snatching people from the grounds of the American embassy compound during the panic of the final Vietcong push into Saigon, I was sitting in front of the television set shouting, Get the chefs! Get the chefs!

Once, in Lisbon, I tried my best to work the phone book in a way that would assuage a longing [Alice and I] had for certain Chinese dishes . . . .

If Lincoln freed the slaves and preserved the Union, how come 'Lincolnesque' just means tall?

The talk shows are stuffed full of sufferers who have regained their health--congressmen who suffered through a serious spell of boozing and skirt-chasing, White House aides who were stricken cruelly with overweening ambition, movie stars and baseball players who came down with acute cases of wanting to trash hotel rooms while under the influence of recreational drugs. Most of them have found God, or at least a publisher.

Marriage is part of a sort of 50′s revival package that's back in vogue along with neckties and naked ambition.

People, not just reporters, are more interested in politics than in government, so the actual issues wouldn't be something that interested them.

There is a theory that sooner or later anything in America that is any fun at all will be ruined by people from California.