My dad was working abroad in Iraq and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him in Baghdad off and on. For the first ten years of my life we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.

I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone let him be where he will.

To own the dominant or only newspaper in a mid-sized American city was for many decades a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age however no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad.

Here's a proposal offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States whether born here or abroad should get to be a citizen until age 18 at which time each such resident has to take a test.