American Quotes

On Career Day in high school, you don't walk around looking for the cartoon guy.

I think I'm maintaining the quality, but internally I'm paying for it.

I just get silly inside my head and I start to think about something and in my head I start twisting it around, contorting it and envisioning it in different ways.

Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money.

You know those little snow globes that you shake up? I always thought my brain was sort of like that. You know, where you just give it a shake and watch what comes out and shake it again. It's like that.

The Bluebird of Happiness long absent from his life, Ned is visited by the Chicken of Depression.

Whenever I finish a book, I start with a blank slate and never have ideas lined up.

We, of course, have the power of hindsight in our arsenal, but people living in Berlin in that era didn't. What would that have been like as this darkness fell over Germany?

There's something so relentless and foul about Hitler and his people, and the way things progressed from year to year. It just got to me in the strangest way.

Reading is such a personal thing to me. I'd much rather give someone a gift certificate to a bookstore, and let that person choose his or her own books.

I'm very perverse. If someone tells me I have to read a book, I'm instantly disinclined to do so.

I was never concretely aware of the extent of anti-Semitism in the United States and in the upper levels of the State Department.

I thought I'd go to a bookstore and see what moved me.

I started reading the big histories and the small histories, the memoirs and so forth. At some point, I found the diary of William E. Dodd.

I pride myself on having a journalistic remove.

I like all kinds of music, though I tend to prefer jazz and classics.

I don't listen to music when I write, but I do turn on appropriate music when I read portions of my manuscripts back to myself - kind of like adding a soundtrack to help shape mood.

Hitler was such an anomalous character - he was so over-the-top chaotic in his approach to statesmanship, his manner and in the violence which overwhelmed the country initially. I think diplomats around the world... felt like something like that simply would not be tolerated by the people of Germany

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.

If all the cars in the United States were placed end to end, it would probably be Labor Day Weekend.

There must be a happy medium somewhere between being totally informed and blissfully unaware.

Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe.

Utility is when you have one telephone, luxury is when you have two, opulence is when you have three - and paradise is when you have none.

The reason people blame things on previous generations is that there's only one other choice.

A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball.

Home computers are being called upon to perform many new functions, including the consumption of homework formerly eaten by the dog.

A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself.

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.