Tony Horwitz Quotes

I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subject of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am.

The first thing you notice, coming to Israel from the Arab world, is that you have left the most courteous region of the globe and entered the rudest. The difference is so profound that you're left wo...

About Author

Anthony Lander Horwitz (June 9, 1958 – May 27, 2019) was an American journalist and author, widely known for his articles and books on subjects including American history and society. He won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.
His books include One for the Road: a Hitchhiker's Outback (1987), Baghdad Without a Map (1991), Confederates in the Attic (1998), Blue Latitudes (AKA Into the Blue) (2002), A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (2008), Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011), and Spying on the South: An Odyssey Across the American Divide (2019).

There are people one knows and people one doesn't. One shouldn't cheapen the former by feigning intimacy with the latter.

My life has been of but little worth mostly fild [sic] up with vanity.

With a

Egyptians undergo an odd personality change behind the wheel of a car. In every other setting, aggression and impatience are frowned upon. The unofficial Egyptian anthem Bokra, Insha'allah, Malesh (To...

Everywhere, it seemed, I had to explore two pasts and two presents; one white, one black, separate and unreconcilable. The past had poisoned the present and the present, in turn, now poisoned remembra...

For Robert Lee Hodge, it was also a way of life. As the Marlon Brando of battlefield bloating, he was often hired for Civil War movies.

Hung be the Heavens in Scarlet

While Americans tried to justify and glorify their Indian-killers, George Armstrong Custer in particular,

Seven severely depressed prisoners were listed as having died of nostalgia.

The way I see it, King said, your great-grandfather fought and died because he believed my great-grandfather should stay a slave. I'm supposed to feel all warm inside about that?

Look at these buttons, one soldier said, fingering his gray wool jacket. I soaked them overnight in a saucer filled with urine. Chemicals in the urine oxidized the brass, giving it the patina of butto...

I came here from Kansas, he announced to his captive. This is a slave state. I want to free all the Negroes in this state. I have possession now of the United States armory, and if the citizens interf...

Van Laar wasn’t a climate change denier, nor did he talk defensively of the United States’ appetite for oil. Rather, he confessed, I don’t give much of a fuck, and nobody I know does, either, because...

Anything you got to do with your own kind in secret, something's wrong with it. You feel bad about it inside.

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, b...

You asked how I'd define prejudice. That's it. Making assumptions about people you've never met.

Lingering

Crumpet. Fifty years later, Michener and the Yanks show up. Then come the travel hacks, who have to justify their fancy rooms and plane fare by telling us this shithole is paradise. He stubbed out his...