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"Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blast barriers, 10 feet tall and 15 feet long and moved into place with cranes. The walls are topped with sandbags, and the sandbags are topped with guard posts from which gun barrels protrude."
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"One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years."
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Personal Development
"Every person on the streets of New York is a type. The city is one big theater where everyone is on display."
Author Name
Personal Development
"L.A. is my American city."
Author Name
Personal Development
"When there were fears about the future of this nation's older cities... when a few of the cities teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, all eyes were focused on Chicago for contrast."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Here is the difference between Dante, Milton, and me. They wrote about hell and never saw the place. I wrote about Chicago after looking the town over for years and years."
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Personal Development
"Chicago sounds rough to the maker of verse. One comfort we have - Cincinnati sounds worse."
Author Name
Personal Development
"London is the clearing-house of the world."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blast barriers, 10 feet tall and 15 feet long and moved into place with cranes. The walls are topped with sandbags, and the sandbags are topped with guard posts from which gun barrels protrude."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Edinburgh is alive with words."
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Personal Development
"Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night."
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Personal Development
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"In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky evening breezes. So, too, in America."
Society
"Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I'm not even sure we can draw lessons from them."
Happiness
"Even I realized that money was to politicians what the eucalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, water, shelter, and something to crap on."
Corruption
"If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult."
Maturity
"The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop."
Governance
"Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As anyone who has had an American nuclear family can tell you, this was a relief to all concerned."
Sociology
"Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human."
Technology
"I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements."
Experience
"The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person."
Observation
"Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there."
Politics
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