Detroits industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

I was managing editor for a while [in National Lampoon ], and it does cause business problems when your circulation goes up.

Fashionably amusing table manners are a matter of breaking the right rule at the right time.

Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.

Long conversations with pals when neither you nor they have had a drink can be a test of palship.

In Western Australia they don't even know how to make that vital piece of sailboating equipment, the gin and tonic.