The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

Sending grown-ups up the wall is one of the things adolescence is all about. A few years ago it was done with rock 'n' roll music. Now at least they can do it quietly with a home computer.

A man writing a letter is a man in the act of thinking, and it was an exercise Reagan obviously enjoyed. After his first meeting with Gorbachev, for example, he sent a 'Dear Murph' letter about it to his old friend George Murphy, a former senator and actor who had once played Reagan's father in a film.

I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families--sometimes into no family at all. When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

Skins tanned to the consistency of well-traveled alligator suitcases.