“I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.”

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

Call a man ‘ignorant,’ and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.

There isn’t much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.

The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.

A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a promissory note that doesn’t actually promise anything. It’s not backed by gold or silver.

I’m old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.

When you’re a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, ‘Gee, I wouldn’t want to be doing that.’ They’re on your side.

When I’m in the car, I want the only one shouting to be me.

If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.

I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

Everybody in the Middle East wants to explain why they’re right.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.

There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.