The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the townlets wither a time and die.

More from Travels With Charley: In Search of America

• A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, long’s he’s with you.
• Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.
• How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?
• I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.
• I have owed you this letter for a very long time — but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool.
• I have owed you this letter for a very long time'but my fingers have avoided the pencil as though it were an old and poisoned tool. Letter to his literary agent, found on his desk after his death in 1968