“There’d never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition.”

…and it occurred to me, with the forcefulness of a thought experienced in 360 degrees, that that’s really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things.

It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.

Finally, this being America, there is the constant possibility of murder.

It sometimes occurs to me that the British have more heritage than isgood for them.

I do find London exciting. Much as I hate to agree with that tedious old git Samuel Johnson, and despite the pompous imbecility of his famous remark about when a man is tired of London he is tired of life…I can’t dispute it.

There is more difference between a zebra and a horse, or between a dolphin and a porpoise, than there is between you and the furry creatures your distant ancestors left behind when they set out to take over the world.

In the countryside, litter doesn’t have a friend. It doesn’t have anybody who’s saying, ‘Wait a minute, this is really starting to get out of control.’

In France, a chemist named Pilatre de Rozier tested the flammability of hydrogen by gulping a mouthful and blowing across an open flame, proving at a stroke that hydrogen is indeed explosively combustible and that eyebrows are not necessarily a permanent feature of one’s face.

Anyone who has read my books will know that I don’t tend to use guides when I am travelling. It’s not a pride thing, but it is certainly a fact.

The best that can be said for Norwegian television is that it gives you the sensation of a coma without the worry and inconvenience.

Des Moines is a mecca of cosmopolitanism, a dynamic hub of wealth and education, where people wear three-piece suits and dark socks, often simultaneously.

Why is it, I wondered, that old people are always so self-centered and excitable? But I just smiled benignly and stood back, comforted by the thought that soon they would be dead.

Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness.

The one thing we have in common with all other living things is that for nearly four billions years our ancestors have managed to slip through a series of closing doors every time we needed them to.

Still, I never really mind bad service in a restaurant. It makes me feel better about not leaving a tip.

That’s the trouble with losing your mind; by the time it’s gone, it’s too late to get it back.

Our atmosphere can’t tell the difference between emissions from an Asian factory, the exhaust from a North American SUV, or deforestation in South America or Africa.

We need leaders who put America First!

I cannot imagine where we would have been without BET.

America betrays its friends. It sets them up and betrays them. I’d rather be America’s enemy.

There are three categories of people in America: those who are afraid, those who don’t know enough to be afraid, and those who know their Bibles.

And when they have done their job, America must look after and honor its veterans.

We feel strongly that the spirit characteristic of America at its noblest, above all the pursuit of higher learning, cannot admit of any conditions .

The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 represented precisely such a hope – that America had learned from its past and acted to secure a better tomorrow.