Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not.

Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill rode to glory on the back of the strong declarative sentence.

One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

The writer who cares about usage must always know the quick from the dead.

If you lose the dullards back in the dust, that's where they belong. You don't want them anyway.

But nothing has replaced the writer. He or she is still stuck with the same old job of saying something that other people will want to read.

Memoir isn't the summary of a life; it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's not; it's a deliberate construction.