"Admitting weakness seems to be such a severe psychic threat for Bush that when he makes a mistake it's safer just to reinforce it. The strategy creates a perverse system of rewards and punishments."
"I just simply write as it moves me. I may be writing about a book or a movie or a person, places where I've been or something I've done. Or politics. It's going to what's on my mind at the moment."
"I just wanted to have fun for myself - I felt I had a lot to say, and I realized that I missed having a magazine as a place to express my ideas. The Times column is a place for me to unload those perceptions."
"I love to run smart essays and commentary. But it doesn't replace the other kind of reporting."
"I think for a young journalist, it's better to write for the Web at the moment than it is for print."
"I'm trying to be entertaining without being mean."
"In the end, Dan Rather's legend skewered him, CBS and the craft of journalism."
"In TV, you always feel you are standing on the tracks of an oncoming train."
"Nothing is better for a young journalist than to go and write about something that other people don't know about. If you can afford to send yourself to some foreign part, I still think that's by far the best way to break in."
"The cloud that descended on Black Rock on Monday was not for the past but the future. How much will this debacle chill the pursuit of other risky investigations?"
"To win respect, the networks seem to feel they have to keep absurdly overstating their anchors' reporting cred."
"TV journalism is a much more collaborative, horizontal business than print reporting. It has to be, because of the logistics. Anchors are wholly dependent on producers to do all the hustling."
"The Taliban knows they have more to fear from an educated girl than an American drone."
"There are a multitude of mothers in the world who have a daughter who is stolen, or who are stolen daughters themselves."
"Not everyone has the survival skills of William Jefferson Clinton."
"The digitally native generation has no idea what has been lost to the freedom of intimacy that has no fear of being recorded."
"Now everyone leaking and tweeting and posting on everyone else is the acknowledged way to get ahead in the 21st century."
"Voters seem to understand what a big waste of time trying to change Washington is."
"Back in his Chicago Senate days, when he was seeking greater black credibility, Obama was happy enough to attend the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Trinity United Church of Christ."
"'Worshipping in private,' as Obama does, comes off as just another form of annoying elitism."
"Along with all those books about Lincoln, Obama might read some biographies of Napoleon. The general who established the Legion d'Honneur understood that people fought as much for medals as for morals."
"I know as much as anyone how much her most fervent supporters want Hillary Clinton to run for president."
"The first black president was a hotter plot line than the first woman president."
"Being president, you may have more power than anyone else in the country, but you quickly discover that you have much, much less than you thought you'd have going in. You're hamstrung in ways you never dreamed of."
"The post-presidency, as Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton have proved, is a win-win. Money, Nobels, the ability to leverage your global celebrity for any cause or hobbyhorse you wish, plus freedom to grab the mike whenever the urge takes you without any terminal repercussions."
