I’ve got a 1990 Porsche 911. It’s just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.
I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.
You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city – you don’t need to go to Beirut for that – but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.
We’ve come into the world of ‘1984,’ but it turns out to be ‘1984’-Lite.
One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world – and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East – is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn’t there. It has to do with history.
People are always angry at America. They’re absolutely certain that America either caused their problems or is deliberately not fixing their problems. But the anger is always directed at America and never at Americans.
The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?
If ever there were a place where people not only tend not to face economic facts, but it’s almost their purpose not to face economic facts, it’s Washington.
Detroit is beautiful – though you probably have to be a child of the industrial Midwest, like me, to see it.
If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
Voting has proliferated in the United States, and it has reached a point where there is now almost one vote available per citizen over the age of eighteen.
Just because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
Call a man ‘ignorant,’ and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.
Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It’s a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.
Something that confirms all fears and many conspiracy theories about government is finding out what our elected representatives would put into law if they could.
The only advantage to being a middle-aged man is that when you put on a jacket and tie, you’re the Scary Dad. Never mind that no one has had an actually scary dad since 1966. The visceral fear remains.
Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.
Mistreatment of al Qaeda members and their friends and hangers-on is something I number among my moral concerns. But it’s number 1,000,000,001.
Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.
America is a meritocracy.
College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions.
I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.
Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.
The laws of the marketplace are physical laws, and they don’t become suspended in a crisis any more than the law of gravity does.
If I were a congressman who had voted for the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, I’d claim it was forced on our country by a sinister international organization.
I’m a political conservative.
When I board an airplane these days, all the middle-aged men are dressed like me – when I was an 8-year-old. They’re in shorts and T-shirts. And it’s not just on airplanes. It’s in business offices, teachers’ lounges, and churches.
A humorist doesn’t really do that much note-taking.
Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How’d they get so rich? Because they’re free.
When I was fifteen, I dreamed of living in the big city, as many a young person does if he is artistic and sensitive. By ‘artistic and sensitive’ I mean short, skinny, unkissed, bad at sports, and carrying a C average in high school.
Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.
Accuse a person of breaking all Ten Commandments, and you’ve written the promo blurb for the dust cover of his tell-all memoir.
There’s a love of rhetorical skill in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden doesn’t just go on tape cassettes and say, ‘America sucks.’ He recites poetry; he finds things that ‘America sucks’ rhymes with.
Are you a Democrat because you’re a union member? Then why, after eight years of Bill Clinton, does some Chinese guy in Guangdong province have your job?
If we were to inspect ourselves or members of our family and our friends, we would see that we don’t really have to go all the way overseas to be mystified – we can be mystified right at home.
To blame the existence of al Qaeda on poverty like Egypt’s is a slur on the poor.
I am a student of stupidity. I am a political reporter.
Obama’s space policy doesn’t differ much from George W. Bush’s.
The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
I think it’s been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
Charles McCarry is the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue – by the breadth of Alan Furst, by the fathom of Eric Ambler, by any measure.
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.
What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it’s so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I’ve received a spam text.
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
One of the few benefits of being a journalist is that you’re not in the Army.
The foundation of collectivism is simple: There should be no important economic differences among people. No one should be too rich.
A Kindle returns us to the inconvenience of the scroll, except with batteries and electronic glitches. It’s as handy as bringing Homer along to recite the ‘Iliad’ while playing a lyre.
What is obnoxious about the motives of politicians – whatever those motives may be – is that politicians must announce their motives as visionary and grand.
Detroit’s industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.
The best and brightest don’t go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country.
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.
When the government runs out of lenders, it can do something that households are forbidden to do: print money.
Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.
Moviemakers are rewarded with tax write-offs if, when seeking a location that looks like America, they seek it in America.
In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City.
I don’t understand anything about America’s culture.
The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.
The one thing that’s terrible about traveling for fun is writing about it.
Modern elites live in bubbles of liberal affluence like Ann Arbor, Brookline, the Upper West Side, Palo Alto, or Chevy Chase. These places used to have impoverished neighborhoods nearby, but the poor people got chased out by young singles living in group homes, hipsters, and urban homesteading gay couples.
