“Consider the Lichen. Lichens are just about the hardiest visible organisms on Earth, but the least ambitious.”

South Dakota… is like the world’s first drive-through sensory deprivation chamber.

There are things you just can’t do in life. You can’t beat the phone company, you can’t make a waiter see you until he’s ready to see you, and you can’t go home again.

Woods are not like other spaces. To begin with, they are cubic. Their trees surround you, loom over you, press in from all sides. Woods choke off views & leave you muddled & without bearings.

I have three kids, the oldest is 18 and her friends are going to see it The Aristocrats because they told her they’re going to see it, especially her guy friends.

To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I’m in exactly the same place I was when I left home – that, to me, is a miracle.

Therefore, I think that in the celebration of the 50 years of the present reign, there must be research on the changes that the country has undergone, and in the future, it could be used as a lesson for our future actions.

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit.

Every dog on the face of the earth wants me dead.

The writer’s life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody’s fault. You chose it.

To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.

A tiny bundle of genetic material passed from one living entity to another, and has never stopped moving since. It was the moment of creation for us all.

Falling out of a posture means you are human; getting back into the posture means you are a yogi.

Absolute brain size does not tell you everything or possibly sometimes even much. Elephants and whales both have brains larger than ours, but you wouldn’t have much trouble outwitting them in contract negotiations.

Now they are a little like those desperate junkies who have tried every known drug and are finally reduced to mainlining toilet bowl cleanser in an effort to get still higher.

Every kid I knew had a father with a little stash of men’s magazines which the father thought was secret and which the kid knew all about.

An awful lot of England is slowly eroding, in ways that I find really distressing, and an awful lot of it is the hedgerows…

I-just-got-off-the-bus-and-I’m-really-excited-and-ambitious-and-I-took-an-acting-class-in-Des-Moines-and-I-know-I-really-need-an-agent-and-I-want-one-NOW

Everyone who knew [Barack] Obama from being in Hyde Park knew he was the smartest guy in any room he walked into; a decent, compassionate, lovely person; pragmatic, middle-of-the-road and ambitious.

I was freakishly ambitious. I didn’t want to be a child. I wanted my own flat, to work and be a grown up.

For years, more women were steered toward the studio or toward being a reporter. If that’s what you want to do and that’s what you love – by all means, go do it. That’s OK to be ambitious and do things that are out of the norm if that’s the route you want to take.

I’ve always liked working really hard and then doing nothing in particular. So, consequently, I didn’t overexpose myself; I guess I maintained a kind of mystery. I wasn’t ambitious.

Saving our planet requires you to be ambitious in what you aim, and, equally, in how hard you work to reach your goal.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

When men call women ambitious they mean pushy.