A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers. And always, in the back of his head, there will be a dozen men and women he will never meet. And always, he will feel the poorer for it.

When you read about a car crash in which two or three youngsters are killed, do you pause to dwell on the amount of love and treasure and patience parents poured into bodies no longer suitable for open caskets?

I can look at my books with pleasure from a distance. Four feet is close enough.

A good writer of history is a guy who is suspicious.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.

A reporter meets interesting people. If he endures, he will get to know princes and presidents, popes and paupers, prostitutes and panderers. And always, in the back of his head, there will be a dozen men and women he will never meet. And always, he will feel the poorer for it.