Good Travel Books Are Novels At Heart.

One Of The Oddest Features Of Western Christianized Culture Is Its Ready Acceptance Of The Myth Of The Stable Family And The Happy Marriage. We Have Been Taught To Accept The Myth Not As An Heroic Ideal, Something Good, Brave, And Nearly Impossible To Fulfil, But As The Very Fiber Of Normal Life. Given Most Families And Most Marriages, The Belief Seems Admirable But Foolhardily.

Over Emphatic Negatives Always Suggest That What Is Being Denied May Be What Is Really Being Asserted.

The Mythical America?that Marvellous, Heroic, Sentimental Landwas An Object Of Faith. It Challenged You To Make The Believer's Leap Over The Rude Facts At Your Feet.

We Need – More Urgently Than Architectural Utopias, Ingenious Traffic Disposal Systems, Or Ecological Programmes – To Comprehend The Nature Of Citizenship, To Make Serious Imaginative Assessment Of That Special Relationship Between The Self And The City; Its Unique Plasticity, Its Privacy And Freedom.

The North-south Line Of 'the Mountains,' Meaning The Cascade Range, Forty Miles East Of Seattle, Is A Rigid Political Frontier.