It is a law of governance that democracies have to spend themselves dizzy. Citizens of democracies can, after all, tell their government to give them things.

One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.

The wise traveler [to Beirut] will pack shirts or blouses with ample breast pockets. Reaching inside a jacket for your passport looks too much like going for the draw and puts armed men out of countinence

I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.

Bob Wallace was my editor at Rolling Stone when I first started writing there, and he's a wonderful editor. I was in the Philippines during the Marcos overthrow, and I was up on what was called Smokey Mountain. I think it's gone now, but it was a garbage dump with a bunch of people living on it. I was talking to Bob on the phone, and I told him, "I'm a humorist. I can't write about this." And Bob told me to let my style be dictated by the subject, to take what I saw and write about it in the tone that it requires.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.

Microeconomics is about money you don't have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.