All Jonathan Raban Quotes
- Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose. Bar
- No president has come near to rivaling Lincoln as a writer. Come Near
- The north-south line of 'the mountains,' meaning the Cascade Range, forty miles east of Seattle, is a rigid political frontier. Cascade
- 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… Better
- Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything… Anything Worthwhile
- 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… Bellingham
- 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… Audience
- 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… Benign
- I've taught the better class of tourist both to see and not to see; to lift their eyes above and beyond the inessentials, and thrill… Better
- 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… All
- 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… America
- Seattle was built out on pilings over the sea, and at high tide the whole city seemed to come afloat like a ship lifting free… Afloat
- 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… Book
- 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… Autobiography
- 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.… Actually Grasp
- 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.… Almost Imagine
- At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all. The… All
- Every White House has had its intellectuals, but very few presidents have been intellectuals themselves - Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson, the list more… Adams
- 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… Broad
- The only nation I've ever been tempted to feel really racist about are the Swiss - a whole country of phobic hand washers living in… Bank