The journalist's job is to get the story by breaking into their offices, by bribing, by seducing people, by lying, by anything else to break through the palace guard.

What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down - literally or otherwise.

The issue I highlight in the book is welfare reform.

We've had the trivialization of our politics going on ever since we had electronic media.

I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.

Much of what candidates have to do is raise money and appeal to constituencies or interest groups that can provide that money.

Alternative media is no longer really alternative, and we're no longer that dependant upon newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times, for our information.

It had run as a column - I had worked at the paper since 1976, but the column had been running for 13 years, and I think it was a strong column, criticizing the war when the paper was supporting it.

When Howard Dean started saying some honest things, they hung him.

If the war on terror is endless, you could forget about democracy.

Today anyone on the Internet can find out more about what you read, think, and earn than the secret police of Stalin or Hitler could have learned.

Permit no one to define you by your mistakes or your past

Tell the negative committee that meets inside your head that they have nothing to say you haven't heard before and it's about time they disbanded until they have something positive to say.

If you make a hiring mistake, make the change quickly. Don’t ignore problems. Don’t assume it will get better.

The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love.

You know, there are easier ways to meet a guy than to run him over.

I'm the world's least happy atheist. I miss having religious faith, but trying to have it seems like trying to be in love with someone that you're not in love with.

Then I went home to continue my life, which had changed a little, as lives do every day, inching by microspecks forward toward whatever surprises are coming next.

Failure is nothing but the kiss of Jesus.

I never thought when I was a kid that I would become an adult. I never thought of myself as having any sort of distant horizon. I have sort of leapt without a master plan.

People always tell me with absolute certainty that they don't trust themselves.