“He spent part of last year working in Canada, and I think it rubbed off on him, diminishing his innate American ability to celebrate the civic virtue of idiocy.”

“Why is America the last best hope of Earth? What if it's Liechtenstein? Or, worse, Canada?”

“No cowboys for Canada. Canada got Mounties instead - Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mind-set of "Here I come to save the day" versus "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker.”

“A couple of days after the last time I saw him, I got a typically well-written postcard. He said that after he kissed me goodbye at LAX he was driving away and turned on the radio. Elvis was singing "It's Now or Never." In my personal religion, a faith cobbled together out of pop songs and books and movies, there is nothing closer to a sign from God than Elvis Presley telling you "tomorrow will be too late" at precisely the moment you drop off a girl you're not sure you want to drop off. Sitting on the stairs to my apartment, I read that card and wept. It said he heard the song and thought about running after me. But he didn't. And just as well--those mixed-faith marriages hardly ever work. An Elvis song coming out of the radio wasn't a sign from God to him, it was just another one of those corny pop tunes he could live without.”

“Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It's called Canada.”

“Not that there wasn't still plenty of subduing to do here in North America. "Even within our own limits, the savage still lights his death fires, to appease the wrath of an idol," he points out. What's worse, to the "north, there is an immense region of palpable darkness." (Hi, Canada!)”

“Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship.”