A White House dinner is the American family assembled, from labor leaders to billionaires, actors, architects, academicians and athletes.

In this era of world leadership, the metal detector is the altar and the minicam may be god.

A sense of humor... is needed armor. Joy in one's heart and some laughter on one's lips is a sign that the person down deep has a pretty good grasp of life.

Carry laughter with you wherever you go.

A sense of humor is needed armor.

Bureaucrats are the only people in the world who can say absolutely nothing and mean it.

We love the blather and boast, the charge and counter-charge of campaigning. Governing is a tougher deal.

The problems seem so easy out there on the stump. Deficits shrink with a rhetorical flourish.

When people travel here from across the country, they shed jealousies and politics and prejudices. The mighty climb down. The humble are elevated.

Reagan "has conducted an arms race on earth," boomed Mondale. A race generally implies two parties. The Soviets contributed a little bit to this problem, if Mondale had not noticed.

Under the pathologist's microscope, life and death fight in an illuminated circle in a sort of cellular bullfight. The pathologist's job is to find the bull among the matador cells

Climate change is destroying our path to sustainability. Ours is a world of looming challenges and increasingly limited resources. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.

I am who I am and I don't think you can put a label on it.

Why wilt thou be so sottish, such an enemy to thyself, as to prefer puddle-water, and that poisoned too and stolen, before pure living waters out of thy own well?

I'm black because that's the way the world sees me.

The fun of living is that we have to make ourselves, after all.

Meryl Streep is so brilliant is because she is so human, and aware as a performer.

There is no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.

When he is best, he is a little worse than a man; and when he is worst, he is little better than a beast.

The world feels overwhelming to me on every level. Just the number of organisms that live on this planet. Our politics, our violence, psychology, emotions; there's just a lot going on, right?