Author's Note

 

Not another memoir by another elder statesman, this book is an anthology of remarks, statements, credos, assertions, declarations, pronouncements, asides and bon mots--the verbal gleanings of four score years and counting.

Over a lifetime, certain comments, expressions and fragments of conversation caught my ear and stuck. Ranging from doggerel to prayer, these remarks fashioned the boundaries of one man’s examined world. The best of what I have heard and overheard follows in an opening sampler available online and three medleys of passages in distinct realms:

 

• the parochial arena of politics and politicians;

• the larger world of foreign affairs and diplomacy; and

• closest to home, my private world outside of the limelight.

 

All that said, here's to listening.

 

- J.W.S