Russia is the only country of the world you can be homesick for while you're still in it.

The difficulty is, all swing thoughts decay, like radium. What burnt up the course on Wednesday has turned to lead on Sunday. Yet it does not do to have a blank mind: the terrible hugeness of the course will rush into the vacuum and the ball will spray like a thing berserk.

From the standpoint of a Middle Eastern citizen, Americans look like a bully forcing our way of life on the Islamic way of life. The notion of purity is very important in Islam, and a lot of the negative warlike actions taken against us have to do with our physical presence in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden was trying to get the American, or protesting the American military presence in Saudi Arabia. It's not surprising that our strong presence in Iraq has produced a wave of resistance anger, extreme anger in some cases, and a permissive atmosphere that allows these people to go undetected.

How can the planet keep turning and turning and not get so bored it explodes?

What you haven't done by thirty you're not likely to do. What you have done you'll do lots more.

There is no pleasing New Englanders, my dear, their soil is all rocks and their hearts are bloodless absolutes.

Fiction is nothing less than the subtlest instrument for self-examination and self-display that Mankind has invented yet.