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.

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

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

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

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.

Hope is a tree of happiness.

As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist.

We celebrate the contribution of people who have come to this country to make it better.

I had to learn how to function as a human being. And I really enjoyed that process.

When I was a ten-year old bookworm and used to kiss the dust jacket pictures of authors as if they were icons, it used to amaze me that these remote people could provoke me to love.

Bethlehem and Golgotha, the Manger and the Cross, the birth and the death, must always be seen together.

He also chooses his enemies.

We cannot take for granted that the future will be better, and that means we need to work to create it today.

Strew gladness on the paths of men-You will not pass this way again.

I'm really into a lot of different music, and a lot of stuff that sounds absolutely nothing like anything on the Mini-Album.