Electoral contests have nothing but polls, which is why people have grown so obsessed with them; we're desperate for an objective rendering of what is happening and what may happen.

Every great political campaign rewrites the rules; devising a new way to win is what gives campaigns a comparative advantage against their foes.

Conservatives must avoid the siren song of schism, or all is lost.

Comedians and impressionists used to be two different showbiz animals entirely, but now there's no such thing as a comedian who doesn't do impressions.

Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change.

There's no light at the end of the tunnel in the Republican message, no promise of better things to come. There's only the present stagnation, followed by a slow decline.

I was wholeheartedly attracted to the conservative atmosphere that permeated the city of Washington.

I look at 'The New York Review of Books.' It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.

While negativity is politically useful, it is also demoralizing unless it is accompanied - and to some extent overshadowed - by elevated and inspiring ideas about the American future.

Your race and gender don't change, but you can choose to change your political affiliation at will.

The problem is that borrowing money to pay back more borrowed money that will oblige you in the future to borrow even more money doesn't sound kosher. Because it isn't.

that's the thing with secrets. They're leaky

I believe it is peace in our time.

No one should be left to suffer alone.

Spending our tax dollars on actually preventing crimes, instead of pursuing death sentences after they've already been committed, will assure us we will have fewer victims.

I have arranged my little life.

I never ponder counterfactuals.

I was marrying someone I loved because I didn't want to lose them; I didn't see anything wrong with that.

She put her head down on the table and cried all the tears that she knew she should have cried in the past year and a half. But they weren't ready then, they were now.

Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less concerned about the later than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.

If you think you can't do something, you can't. But if you think you can, you may be surprised to discover that you can.