Good news is rare these days, and every glittering ounce of it should be cherished and hoarded and worshipped and fondled like a priceless diamond.

So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?

In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upward mobile.

I felt a strange tightness coming over me, and I reacted instinctively – for the first time in a long, long while – by slipping my notebook into my belt and reaching down to take off my watch. The first thing to go in a street fight is your watch, and once you’ve lost a few, you develop a certain instinct that lets you know when it’s time to get the thing off your wrist and into a safe pocket.

I am surprised and embarrassed to be a part of the first American generation to leave the country in far worse shape than it was when we first came into it.

Jack Kerouac influenced me quite a bit as a writer... in the Arab sense that the enemy of my enemy was my friend.

Richard Nixon was an evil man - evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.