The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name.

When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.

Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.

Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.