For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

[On journalists:] We are a noisy, imperfect lot, struggling to scribble what has been called the first draft of history.

Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.

Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal, but the tiger always eats last.

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.

When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit.

If you're famous enough, the rules don't apply.

A friendship between reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.

Celebrity is the religion of our time.

Through the dripping weeks that follow One another slow, and soak Summer's extinguished fire and autumn's drifting smoke.

I was a mother's boy.

I'm passionately opposed to the nuclear family, with its mom and dad and their 2.4 children. I think it's the most neurotic life-style ever developed.

It is difficult to get men to pick up a female author. Women will read men, but men won't read women.

Suspicion is the greatest enemy of love whether it is true or not.

What you can do with a short story that you can't do with a novel is punch someone in the gut, in the best of ways.

The trouble with the lower classes is that they lack the sense of tragedy given to them by the upper classes.

I’m just mad for San Francisco. It is like London and Paris stacked on top of each other.

All theological lore is becoming distasteful to me.