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.

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.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.

Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

It is fitting that yesteryear's swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today's solemn young sobersides nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.

A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.