Airports Quotations | Page 5

Never try to be witty with U.S. airport officials. It's always lost on them and you'll find yourself being put back on the plane.

I hate flying, airports and the whole rigmarole - queuing up, security and lost luggage.

During the week that I arrived in the United States, I saw an airport, used a telephone, used a library, talked with a scientist, and was shown a computer for the first time in my life.

Shamu and I have arrived safely in Costa Rica. He was stopped by airport security because he carries enough artillery in his pants pockets to construct a sawed-off shotgun. Evidently, he though we were headed to Iraq.

I don't do much driving - about 5,000-6,000 miles a year. And most of that is to the airport and to the racing circuits.

Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether.

There were precisely two groups of people who desperately wanted airport security to be browbeaten into giving suspicious passengers a pass: terrorists and Democrats.

In June 2002, airport security searched Al Gore. There's a lot not to like about Gore, but he's not a terrorist. Gore said he was glad he was searched. Why? To spare a terrorist the trouble? This is a serious national issue; why must liberals lie? Searching Al Gore is purely a religious act. It is the purposeless fetishistic performance of ritual in accordance with the civic religion of liberalism.

I have way too many commitments. I get pulled in too many directions and I never seem to be able to satisfy anybody. People get turned on by knowing a celebrity, even my friends and family. They feel that there's something exciting about me, but in reality there's no substance to it. People in airports just hold on to me expecting something and it seems that I always come up empty. It's frustrating because I'm trying to please everybody, and ya just can't do that ... at least I can't.

To me, the greatest invention of my lifetime is the laptop computer and the fact that I can be working on a book and be in an airport lounge, in a hotel room, and continue working; I fire up my laptop, and I'm in exactly the same place I was when I left home - that, to me, is a miracle.