If we live inside a bad joke, it is up to us to learn, at best and worst, to tell it well. Jonathan Raban More Quotes by Jonathan Raban More Quotes From Jonathan Raban When I want an opinion, I'll get it from my peers - from men of vision, like our great railroad builders... Stanford, Huntington, Dinsmore... fellows with imaginations broad enough to span the continent. Jonathan Raban visionimaginationmen No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer. Jonathan Raban president The city has always been an embodiment of hope and a source of feeling guilt; a dream pursued, and found vain, wanting, and destructive. Jonathan Raban citiesdreamfeelings Seattle is not an overly friendly city. It is a civil city, but not altogether friendly. People from outside mistake the civility for friendliness. Seattle is full of people who have their own lives to live. They won't waste their time being friendly. But they are civil. Jonathan Raban citiesmistakepeople Seattle is a liberal city, its politics not so much blue in the American, not the British, sense as deep ultramarine, and its manners are studiously polite. Jonathan Raban citiesbluemanners The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography, 'Why Not the Best?,' published in 1975. Jonathan Raban dreamfatherbook To the newcomer who has not learned its language, a large city is a chaos of details, a vast Woolworths store of differently colored, simlarly priced objects. Jonathan Raban chaosdetailscities My new city [Seattle] and its hinterland felt deceptively homely. Their similar latitude gave them the angular light and lingering evenings I was used to. Their damp marine weather, blowing in from the southwest, came in the right direction. When the mountains are hidden under a low sky, one might almost imagine oneself to be in Britain. Jonathan Raban marinecitiessky The only real river I knew was hardly more than a brook. It spilled through a tumbledown mill at the bottom of our road, opened into a little trouty pool, then ran on through water meadows over graveled shallows into Fakenham [England], where it slowed and deepened, gathering strength for the long drifts across muddy flatlands to Norwich and the North Sea. Jonathan Raban realsearivers I loved the audacity of that American principle which says. When life gets tainted or goes stale, junk it! Leave it behind! Go West! Jonathan Raban junkaudacityprinciples When New Yorkers tell one about the dangers of their city, the muggings, the dinner parties to which no one turns up for fear of being attacked on the way, the traffic snarl-ups, the bland indifference of the city cops, they are unmistakably bragging. Jonathan Raban partycitiesnew-york Heartbreak comes in different sizes, and the departure of an 18-year-old child for a far college has to be treated as a very benign form of the disease. Jonathan Raban collegechildrenyears 'Dreams From My Father' reveals more about Obama than is usually known about political leaders until after they're dead. Perhaps more than it intends, it shows his mind working, in real time, sentence by sentence, in what feels like a private audience with the reader. Jonathan Raban realdreamfather Democrats inhabit the low shores of Puget Sound, mostly on its eastern side, in a ragged trail of port-cities that stretches from Bellingham, close to the Canadian border, through Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma, to Olympia, the state capital, at the southern end of the sound. Jonathan Raban southerncitiessides It's been so long since a talented writer last occupied the White House; no wonder, then, that American writers have been among the most prominent of all the demographic groups claiming a piece of Barack Obama for themselves. Jonathan Raban whitehouselong
