I want to help small businesses grow and thrive. I know how to make that happen. I spent my life in the private sector. I know why jobs come and why they go.

We will strengthen our security by building missile defense, restoring our military might, and standing by and strengthening our intelligence officers.

I like PBS. I love Big Bird ... But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.

I'm not going to wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to Russia, or Mr. Putin.

I have never once regretted missing a business opportunity so that I could be with my children and grandchildren.

My wife drives a couple of Cadillacs.

I have some friends who are NASCAR team owners.

I am in favor of stem-cell research. I am not in favor of creating new human embryos through cloning.

Isn't it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it?

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what.

I'm not familiar precisely with what I said, but I'll stand by what I said, whatever it was.

Give me a moment, because I like to cry for joy. It's so delicious, John dear, to cry for joy.

At times I felt that the universe fabricated from the power of imagination had stronger and more lasting contours than the blurred realm of the flesh-and-blood creatures around me.

Sometimes I do work on a longer manuscript in tandem with one or two shorter pieces - whether it's a short story or an essay (though I don't write many of the latter).

The child should have the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure.

He and I…we share a bond. Not love, exactly. It goes beyond that. He is mine as surely as sun follows moon across the sky. Mine before ever I knew he existed. Mine until death and beyond.

The media, of course, loves to make claims about the fountain of youth. Don't believe it. No one has it. But we're getting close.

Tragedy has the great moral defect of giving too much importance to life and death.

It is a testament to our naïveté about culture that we think that we can change it by simply declaring new values. Such declarations usually produce only cynicism.

If the girls and boys have talent and feel like working on themselves, they can become champions.

There's always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side.