I felt less like Cinderella and more like used drywall. Perpetually screwed.

[H]er spare strange beauty was not that of a woman, nor even of a statue, but that of the Platonic absolute of which all beauty is but a shadow in a cave, cast by the Fire beyond fire.

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

We need money. We need hits. Hits bring money, money bring power, power bring fame, fame change the game.

Love is the key to felicity, nor is there a heaven to any who love not. We enter Paradise through its gates only.

Politics is not a tea party. When it is time to act, you have to move fast and decisively.

Knowing reality means constructing systems of transformations that correspond, more or less adequately, to reality.

The goal is not to make something factually impeccable, but seamlessly persuasive.

The reason I'm not an alcoholic is I don't like to drink in front of the kids . . . and when you're away from them, who needs it?.

I wasn't certain of anything anymore, except that New Orleans was a faithless friend and I wanted to leave her.

This book should be read as one would read the book of a dead man.