In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.

Ive summarized dozens of books in my literary career; its become rather second nature.

In politics, if you're explaining, you're loosing.

It takes two things to make a political lie work: a powerful person or institution willing to utter it, and another set of powerful institutions to amplify it.

Only liberals know how to make you freer on the job, which is where most of us suffer the gravest indignities in our lives.

I cant summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tatis Play Time. You just have to see it.

No historical analogies are exactly precise.

When legitimately constituted state authority stands down in the face of armed threats, the very foundation of the republic is in danger.

College was at the heart of his sentimental imagination.

Stories are "how we organize the chaos of experience into the order we require just a carry-on." Joan Gideon

Presidents are also always storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies.

People cry out against the sinner, yet it is not the sinful, but the stupid, who are our shame. There is no sin except stupidity.

And I'm afraid, in this day and age, trust, which I count so, you know, I love loyalty. I love trust.

But if we get to the point where more people do not believe in a God than who do believe in God, we will have a hollow legal system - we will have something without heart.

In places in the world where we don't speak the same language, or even understand that we pray to the same God, we dance to the same beat, that is the ONE.

Flattery is a foolish suicide; she destroys herself with her own hands.

... the life of the mind is reality, and love without romantic illumination is a spiritless matter.

Musicians are affected by the audience just as much as audiences are affected by the musicians. The only problem is that often times musicians won't allow themselves to admit to that fact.

We've learned from experience that the truth will out.

A vice is merely a pleasure to which somebody has objected.

He's pulling the load of an ox and walking on eggshells.