No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer. Jonathan Raban More Quotes by Jonathan Raban More Quotes From Jonathan Raban All this piling up of one technology on top of another-railroad on steamboat, interstate highway on railroad, hydroelectric dam on watermill-had reduced the Mississippi from a wonder of nature to this sluggish canal on the wrong side of the tracks. Jonathan Raban track technology rivers Sociology and anthropology are not disciplines which take easily to situations where people are able to live out their fantasies, not just in the symbolic action of ritual, but in the concrete theater of society at large. Jonathan Raban discipline society people 'Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking in, their public demonstrations appear to be more enraged than any political events in America since the race riots and anti-war protests of the 1960s. Jonathan Raban race-riots party war If we live inside a bad joke, it is up to us to learn, at best and worst, to tell it well. Jonathan Raban bad-jokes wells worst Simply as a writer of books I'm thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to build a central library, and moreover to rebuild every other library in the city: 28 of them. Jonathan Raban cities should-have book The Falklands held a mirror up to our own islands, and it reflected, in brilliantly sharp focus, all our injured belittlement, our sense of being beleaguered, neglected and misunderstood. Jonathan Raban focus mirrors islands The [travel] writer, looking back at the journey from a distance of a year or two (or three), is a different character from the hapless character who undertook the trip: wise after the event, with the leisure to tease out meanings from the experience that the distracted traveler never had, and often impatient with his alter ego's blinkered and unsatisfactory version of things. Jonathan Raban distance wise character Trouble defies the law of gravity. It's easier to pick up than to drop. Jonathan Raban easier trouble law The trouble with ghostwriting is that it raises the issue of whether the president is in a state of diminished responsibility for what he says. Does he actually grasp the implications of the words he speaks? Jonathan Raban issues president responsibility Insofar as I think about postmodernism at all, and it doesn't exactly keep me awake at nights, I think of it as something that happens to one, not a style one affects. We're postmoderns because we're not modernists. The modernist writersPound, Eliot, Joyce, Stevens, Yeats, Woolf, Williamsspoke with a kind of vatic authority: they were really the last of the Romantics, for whom authorship itself was like being a solitary prophet in the wasteland. Jonathan Raban style night thinking By the end of the 1980s, Seattle had taken on the dangerous lustre of a promised city. The rumour had gone out that if you had failed in Detroit you might yet succeed in Seattle - and that if you'd succeeded in Seoul, you could succeed even better in Seattle... Seattle was the coming place. So I joined the line of hopefuls. Jonathan Raban detroit taken cities The north-south line of 'the mountains,' meaning the Cascade Range, forty miles east of Seattle, is a rigid political frontier. Jonathan Raban mountain east political Seattle is this curious liberal island. Jonathan Raban seattle curious islands Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style. Jonathan Raban style book people In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air. Jonathan Raban nature air country There's an enduring American compulsion to be on the side of the angels. Expediency alone has never been an adequate American reason for doing anything. When actions are judged, they go before the bar of God, where Mom and the Flag closely flank His presence. Jonathan Raban angel mom sides Because Washington state now votes by mail, elections here tend to play out, at an agonizingly slow speed, over many days and, sometimes, weeks. Jonathan Raban washington-state mail play Inaugurals conventionally start with a history lesson and finish with a prayer. Jonathan Raban lessons prayer Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted. Jonathan Raban denied rejection may Spells of acute loneliness are an essential part of travel. Loneliness makes things happen. Jonathan Raban make-things-happen essentials loneliness
