Seattle is a liberal city, its politics not so much blue in the American, not the British, sense as deep ultramarine, and its manners are studiously polite.

Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style.

In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air.

When I want an opinion, I'll get it from my peers - from men of vision, like our great railroad builders... Stanford, Huntington, Dinsmore... fellows with imaginations broad enough to span the continent.

Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted.

Spells of acute loneliness are an essential part of travel. Loneliness makes things happen.

I ain't sleeping. I'm just taking a good look at the insides of my eyelids.