If you believe that health care is a public good to be guaranteed by the state, then a single-payer system is the next best alternative. Unfortunately, it is fiscally unsustainable without rationing.

When under attack, no country is obligated to collect permission slips from allies to strike back.

A drone is a high-tech version of an old army and a musket. It ought to be used in Somalia to hunt bad guys, but not in America. I don't want to see it hovering over anybody's home.

Chess: It's like alcohol. It's a drug. I have to control it, or it could overwhelm me. I have a regular Monday night game at my home, and I do play a little online.

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

There's a reason why in New York Harbor we have the Statue of Liberty, not the Statue of Equality.

If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House.

In explaining any puzzling Washington phenomenon, always choose stupidity over conspiracy, incompetence over cunning. Anything else gives them too much credit.

Better to be paralyzed from the neck down than the neck up

Washington is the only place in the world where a gaffe is when a politician accidently speaks the truth.

Obsession with self is the motif of our time.

For when Iwaltzed with Chris, I'd made him someone else.

When I imagine changing places with her I get the feeling I do on finishing a novel with a brick-wall happy ending---I mean the kind of ending when you never think any more about the characters.

The keen spirit seizes the prompt occasion.

I've never had any prima donna attitude against me. It's always been very respectful.

Avoid theatrical flourishes - the phrases that sound so damned good that they stand up and beg to be recognized as "good writing," and therefore must be struck from the text.

I'm sure there will continue to be exciting new products and major changes, but it looks as if the existing technology has a great deal of room to grow and prosper.

It would be great to have Bach in one corner, Bessie Smith in another, John Lennon in another. That's what I'd ideally like. A studio of the dead.

I think girls in general need to be more complimentary... It just makes people feel better.

The history of what the law has been is necessary to the knowledge of what the law is.

Talent's like a baby. Wrap it up in wool and it goes to sleep.