Barack Obama is pretty similar to the person you see in public, at press conferences. He's a little saltier, a little more sarcastic and cutting.

Activists measure progress against the standard of perfection, or at least the most perfect possible choice. Historians gauge progress against what came before it.

Trump's not the future; his ideas and his coalition are a dead end.

President Obama is so much smarter and a better communicator than members of Congress in either party. The contrast, side by side, is almost ridiculous.

Barack Obama is an intellectual.

I never thought Hillary Clinton was a very good politician.

I'm convinced in 100 years Obama will have an important place in the civic pantheon of American life.

Donald Trump will be a tragedy, a sad joke in American history.

Everything on Twitter is true.

We're not going to be living in a world of abundant coal power in a hundred years.

We're not going to be living in a world where white identity politics is the basis for a major political party.

I dreamt of worldly success once.

she delighted in being of the same substance as them, and in knowing that when she died her flesh would nourish other lives as they had nourished her.

Once your mind stretches to a new level it never goes back to its original dimension

There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds.

The Jews took Israel from the Arabs after the Arabs had lived there for a thousand years. Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state.

No one knows, the heart of a child, how it grows until it is too late.

And there was Frodo, pale and worn, and yet himself again; and in his eyes there was peace now, neither strain of will, nor madness, nor any fear. His burden was taken away.

I think that most of us [writers] would rather have an audience than countless riches. If we wanted to be rich, we'd be doing smething else.

I always thought Cheers ended well. You always anticipate that the characters, theough they're leaving television, will somehow go on in another world of the imagination, which I think is good.

The most admirable method is that by which each wash of colour, large or small, is never disturbed. It admits of practically no overpainting, sponging or scrubbing. The colour stays where it is put.