Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives. If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you. If not, why embarrass him?

It's not right to say that our loss in Vietnam turned out to be a gain. But lessons were learned. And they were the right lessons.

The good old days are now.

I haven't got any fan mail from Osama bin Laden. I have no reason to believe he reads my stuff I'll never decide for commercial reasons to put something in that endangers our national security. You just can't do that.

The most wounding insult to an educated Russian was to be called nekulturny-uncultured-yet the same men who sat in the gilt boxes at the Moscow State Opera weeping at the end of a performance of Boris Gudunov could immediately turn around and order the execution or imprisonment of a hundred men without blinking. A strange people, made more strange by their political philosophy.

Life was such a strange thing, so permanent when one had it, so fleeting when it was lost- and those who lost it could never tell you what it was like, could they?

People live longer today than they ever have. They live happier lives, have more knowledge, more information. All this is the result of communications technology. How is any of that bad?