American Secretaries of State have typically been more buttoned up than bon vivant, but John Quincy Adams's diplomatic successes - bigger than anything Presidential or legislative that he achieved - still surprise a student of his personality. Thomas Mallon More Quotes by Thomas Mallon More Quotes From Thomas Mallon My prescription for writer's block is to face the fact that there is no such thing.... Writing well is difficult, but one can always write something. And then, with a lot of work, make it better. It's a question of having enough will and ambition, not of hoping to evade this mysterious hysteria people are always talking about. Thomas Mallon block ambition writing Cell phones, alas, have pretty much ruined train travel, which I used to love. I could read or even sketch notes for what I was working on. Thomas Mallon cell-phone phones cells I have a picture of the Pont Neuf on a wall in my apartment, but i know that Paris is really on the closet shelf, in the box next to the sleeping bag, with the rest of my diaries. Thomas Mallon paris wall sleep The romantic appeal of solar sailing has ensured that its advocates consistently come from the worlds of both science fiction and science fact. Thomas Mallon sailing fiction world Ive always got a novel under way, but if I try to work on it every day, exclusively, I falter. So I always keep more than one thing going. Thomas Mallon novel trying way Letters had always defeated distance, but with the coming of e-mail, time seemed to be vanquished as well. Thomas Mallon distance mail letters I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them. Thomas Mallon book thinking Bobby Kennedy's conduct toward Lyndon Johnson was childish and despicable. As the years went on, he displayed nasty, self-pitying, and messianic qualities that would have made him a dangerously authoritarian president. Thomas Mallon childish nasty president years I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about; read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources. Thomas Mallon you writing history people John Quincy Adams ranks with Jimmy Carter on the roster of ex-presidential redemption. Instead of completing a biography of his father, he let himself be elected to the House, where he spent nine terms in Whiggish opposition to the Democrats, supporting a national bank and a protective tariff and internal improvements. Thomas Mallon bank redemption house father Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail. Thomas Mallon nation thought government business The Czech Republic, severed from its old Slovak half, sits in apparent landlocked contentment, inside the European Union but outside the troubled Euro Zone, set into the new Continental mosaic like one of the small sturdy paving stones, just a few inches square, that form the sidewalks under the visitor's ambling feet. Thomas Mallon inside new small feet The cosmic game changed forever in 1992. Before then, logic told us that there had to be other planets besides the nine (if you still count poor Pluto) in our solar system, but until that year, when two astronomers detected faint, telltale radio signals in the constellation Virgo, we had no hard evidence of their existence. Thomas Mallon game you hard poor Stars, of course, are too hot to support life, so wherever life might exist in the universe, it has to be on planets or moons that are warmed, but not incinerated, by the stars they travel around. Thomas Mallon support stars life travel The green appeal of solar sailing - traveling by light, once chemical propellants have done their dirty job of orbital insertion - ought to be powerful. Thomas Mallon job green powerful light I'm not convinced that Nixon would have survived in office if he'd burned the tapes, but I do believe he would have served out his presidency if he'd never made them in the first place. Thomas Mallon place never office believe The late Tom Wicker's biography of Nixon, called 'One of Us,' is really quite good: you see the biographer discovering dimensions of sympathy for his subject that he hadn't expected to feel. Thomas Mallon feel good you sympathy With 'Fellow Travelers,' I think I was consciously trying to imagine what my own life as a gay man might have been like if I'd been born exactly 20 years earlier. Thomas Mallon think man gay life I'd have to say that Nixon feels like the public figure who most dominated my life - from the time I went to fourth grade wearing a Nixon-Lodge button in the fall of 1960, through my college years, which overlapped with Kent State, Cambodia, the China trip and all the rest. Thomas Mallon my-life rest time life Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way toward what happened in November, which was an electoral win with 49 states. And the sheer unnecessariness of the Watergate break-in is something that must have tormented him and his allies in all of the years that followed. Thomas Mallon doing win november way
