Everything in Russia is made of cement -- phone booths, fence posts and light bulbs.

People in Russia adapt to misery by a deep, deep humor.

I think what is important for things to be funny is if you the listener, or the reader, get a chance to supply the humor of it yourself.

When the days start to get shorter, I want to be in some nice brick building on the East Coast with the lights glowing in the windows. When the daylight starts changing, I want to be out West.

Words are charms. It's like a song you didn't even know you knew.

America can enjoy a vital, fully functioning government, with all the benefits provided by Texas, while reducing Texas at the same time.

I'm one of those people who happen to like trees. I don't know why -- I just do. As a kid, I loved to climb them. The distant, upper branches, especially, were celestial and alluring.

Roy Blount is so funny, and he sounds like he's just talking, and the next thing you know he has tossed off

an essay as elegant and intricately structured as a birdsong. His ear for American speech is better than anybody's.

You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.

I marvel now that it was not obvious how inextricable suffering and fear are. It was not until fear left that I noticed, slowly, how it seemed to have taken suffering with it. It took a while to figure out that (for me, anyhow) suffering is mostly caused by fear -- not by the circumstances themselves, but by my response to them.

I don't want to participate in traditional Indian religious ceremonies -- dance in a sun dance or pray in a sweat lodge or go on a vision quest with the help of a medicine man. The power of these ceremonies has an appeal, but I'm content with what little religion I already have.

I don't want to collect Indian art, though pots and beadwork and blankets made by Indians remain the most beautiful art objects in the American West, in my opinion.

I was friends with Russians who said I should see Russia. I went there in '93 and it was so exciting, and I went to Siberia and had a great time.

I don't have a disregard for my reader in humor pieces.

I would hate to see the idea of freedom disappear, and I wonder if maybe it will.

Would Crazy Horse have spent this much to remodel a kitchen?

Then a beat-up car lurched into sight towing an even more beat-up car. As the cars came near, I saw that they were connected back to front by a loop made of two seat belts buckled to each other. That was the only time I ever saw a Russian use a seat belt for any purpose at all.

When I needed to think or was really upset, generally I climbed a tree.

I think Indians dress better than anyone, but I don't want to imitate more than a detail or two; I prefer my clothes humdrum and inconspicuous, and a cowboy hat just doesn't work for me.

On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.