An American in London...cannot but be impressed and charmed by the city. The momumentality of Washington, the thriving business of New York, the antique intimacy of Boston, plus a certain spacious and open feeling reminiscent of Denver and San Francisco-all these he finds combined for his pleasure.

History. The more of it you have the more you have to live it. After a little while there gets to be too much of it to memorize and maybe that's when empires start to decline.

Most of American life consists of driving somewhere and then returning home, wondering why the hell you went.

Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face.

Government money in the arts, I fear, can only deflect artists from their responsibility to find an authentic market for their products.

Journalism has not only its social stimulations but its aesthetic virtues. An invitation into print, from however suspect a source, is an opportunity to make something beautiful, to discover within oneself a treasure that would otherwise have remained buried.

Suddenly summoned to witness something great and horrendous, we keep fighting not to reduce it to our own smallness.