"Those choice had to be made, Jeff thought He’d learned to accept the potential losses, in the hope that they would be outweighed by the gains. The only certain failure, he knew, and the most grievous, would be never to risk at all."

"Over and over again he would be led by desire into excess, and each time he would experience the painful consequences, until at last he learned moderation, i.e., he learned to conform his bodily acts …"

"The piano players were very important in the early days, and the great piano players were always on the East Coast; there never was anybody in the West who could play two notes. , who was mainly a wri…"

"Sitting back in the hard plastic chair on the hotel roof, I reflected on that talk I'd given to the CENTCOM intelligence staff the previous Friday. America was in deep shock, reeling from the images o…"

"I understood, even then, that without question the best way to understand these people was to understand their infatuation with cars."