There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels--all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25]

When you run in places you visit, you encounter things you'd never see otherwise.

Washington tends to be full of too many traps. I think reporters there do a lot of attending news briefings and news conferences expecting to get the real news out of those relatively sterile environments. But you've got to deal with the obscure people as well as the names.

People do not like to have their favorite myths of idols challenged and as a rule I think that the public does not like bad news.

Forty years after the greatest scandal of the American presidency, Elizabeth Drew's account in Washington Journal remains fresh and riveting, instructive and evocative. Her afterword on Nixon's post-Watergate life is equally compelling.

If fishing is a religion, fly fishing is the high church.

I like Washington a great deal. I enjoyed living there. But then I've enjoyed living almost everywhere I've ever been. I just find that it's a different menu wherever you go.