Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life.

There was scarcely a woman alive, it seemed, who could resist the urge to haul men down onto beds, car seats, kitchen floors, dining-room tables, park grass, parlor sofas, or packing crates, entwine warm thighs around them, and pant in ecstasy.

Humans treat time as a map and always know where they are located on it and respond with the appropriate emotion.

Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.

What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.

The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.