[On Italy:] ... the country where kindness to strangers is a religion, you can't turn your head without seeing something beautiful, and you can't get a bad meal if you try.

My friend Phil has a theory that the Lord, having made teenagers, felt constrained to make amends and so created the golden retriever.

[On men:] On their best days, the best of them are eight years old.

[On George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis:] Americans now know they can vote for a man who can't express his thoughts or a man who can't express his feelings.

I am hoping for better times. That's how you know us hapless gardeners - by our dirty fingernails and our absurd, unquenchable optimism about next year.

You need the will to disarm the civilian population. If we can do it in Somalia, we can do it here.

Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become.