Trouble defies the law of gravity. It's easier to pick up than to drop. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
I ain't sleeping. I'm just taking a good look at the insides of my eyelids. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
I loved the audacity of that American principle which says. When life gets tainted or goes stale, junk it! Leave it behind!… — Jonathan Raban Audacity Copy Share Image
Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Spells of acute loneliness are an essential part of travel. Loneliness makes things happen. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
The north-south line of 'the mountains,' meaning the Cascade Range, forty miles east of Seattle, is a rigid political frontier. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Inaugurals conventionally start with a history lesson and finish with a prayer. — Jonathan Raban History Copy Share Image
Simply as a writer of books I'm thrilled and proud that Seattle should have raised, on a public vote, sufficient money to… — Jonathan Raban Book Copy Share Image
The only nation I've ever been tempted to feel really racist about are the Swiss - a whole country of phobic hand… — Jonathan Raban Country Copy Share Image
All this piling up of one technology on top of another-railroad on steamboat, interstate highway on railroad, hydroelectric dam on watermill-had reduced… — Jonathan Raban Canals Copy Share Image
Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson,… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and… — Jonathan Raban Art Copy Share Image
Rage' is the word that most often attaches itself to the Tea Party movement, and it's true that, from the outside looking… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was… — Jonathan Raban Book Copy Share Image
It's been so long since a talented writer last occupied the White House; no wonder, then, that American writers have been among… — Jonathan Raban American writer Copy Share Image
Insofar as I think about postmodernism at all, and it doesn't exactly keep me awake at nights, I think of it as… — Jonathan Raban Authority Copy Share Image
When traveling, I usually keep a notebook: when home at my desk, the notebook serves mainly to remind me how little I… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
My new city [Seattle] and its hinterland felt deceptively homely. Their similar latitude gave them the angular light and lingering evenings I… — Jonathan Raban Britain Copy Share Image
One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when… — Jonathan Raban American landscape Copy Share Image
Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man… — Jonathan Raban Architecture Copy Share Image
By the end of the 1980s, Seattle had taken on the dangerous lustre of a promised city. The rumour had gone out… — Jonathan Raban Cities Copy Share Image
The [travel] writer, looking back at the journey from a distance of a year or two (or three), is a different character… — Jonathan Raban Alter ego Copy Share Image
One of the oddest features of western Christianized culture is its ready acceptance of the myth of the stable family and the… — Jonathan Raban Acceptance Copy Share Image
The city has always been an embodiment of hope and a source of feeling guilt; a dream pursued, and found vain, wanting,… — Jonathan Raban Cities Copy Share Image
Because Washington state now votes by mail, elections here tend to play out, at an agonizingly slow speed, over many days and,… — Jonathan Raban Democracy Copy Share Image
In novels and autobiographies, the first positive move that the immigrant makes towards assimilation is to buy himself a suit of city… — Jonathan Raban Assimilation Copy Share Image
In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air. — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
In rural areas the majority of the victims of violent crime know their assailants (indeed, are probably married to them); in cities,… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Democrats inhabit the low shores of Puget Sound, mostly on its eastern side, in a ragged trail of port-cities that stretches from… — Jonathan Raban Borders Copy Share Image
The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude… — Jonathan Raban America Copy Share Image
Sociology and anthropology are not disciplines which take easily to situations where people are able to live out their fantasies, not just… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Seattle is not an overly friendly city. It is a civil city, but not altogether friendly. People from outside mistake the civility… — Jonathan Raban Cities Copy Share Image
When New Yorkers tell one about the dangers of their city, the muggings, the dinner parties to which no one turns up… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
Heartbreak comes in different sizes, and the departure of an 18-year-old child for a far college has to be treated as a… — Jonathan Raban Copy Share Image
![“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…” quote by Jonathan Raban](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/8e6/jonathan-raban-11981_britain_my-new-city-seattle-and-its-hinterland-f_363879.jpg)
![“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…” quote by Jonathan Raban](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/e55/jonathan-raban-11981_alter-ego_the-travel-writer-looking-back-at-the-jo_461527.jpg)
