As you have sown so shall you reap.

One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one did this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pants they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swa

Christopher Hitchens

In pain is a new time born.

Adelbert Von Chamisso

Heroes to me are guys that sit in libraries. They absorb knowledge and then the risks they take are calculated on the basis of the courage it took to become replete with knowledge.

William Hurt

The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.

W. H. Auden

Poetry's always dead, you know? You don't realize how good poetry is until 15 years later.

Richard Hell

There's nothing more satisfying than seeing a happy and smiling child. I always help in any way I can, even if it's just by signing an autograph. A child's smile is worth more than all the money in the world.

Lionel Messi

Experience is the extract of suffering.

Sir Arthur Helps

I was making a lot of 8mm home movies, since I was twelve, making little dramas and comedies with the neighborhood kids.

Steven Spielberg

My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!

Thomas Jefferson

The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other.

Arthur Rubinstein

My wife, whenever I'd go off to work and I'd be kind of anxious, she'll say, 'Remember, have fun.' Oh, I forgot, thanks for the reminder. Because sometimes we do forget. We take it all too seriously and there's a lot of joy to be had wherever you are.

Jeff Bridges

Some of us might find happiness if we quit struggling so desperately for it.

William Feather