Candidates' wives are supposed to sit cheerfully through their husbands' appearances.

You make real progress when somebody is honest enough to say something that's really uncomfortable.

Michelle Obama has mostly stuck to pretty anodyne topics. She's anti-childhood obesity, she's pro-veteran.

Interpreting anyone's marriage - a neighbor's, let alone the president's - is extremely difficult.

People who face too many demands - two careers, two children - often scale back somehow. The Obamas scaled up.

I've learned that the best political reporters never make predictions!

It's not that Michelle Obama is trying to conceal her true feelings, it's that she does not want to be a political liability to her husband.

I don't like corporate diversity workshops.

Michelle Obama is somebody who really wants to take the high road.

When you realize there is something you don't understand, then you're generally on the right path to understanding all kinds of things.

Liberalization and democratization are in essence counter-revolution.

I know nothing, because I know too much, and understand not nearly enough and never will.

It is a shame to confess but among all living creatures only man doesn't know what is useful for him.

Well may we say 'God save the Queen', because nothing will save the Governor-General'.

France was an occupied country, a country that surrendered and was left without the right to choose.

War today is such a more visible thing. We see it on television, on CNN. In 1914, war was a concept.

If you pay attention to good critics, you have to listen to the bad. So you have to ignore them all really. You can't just cherry pick the glowing ones.

The unexpected connections we make might not last, yet stay with us forever

All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by the people who are not allowed in.