Rejection would be a disaster for the U.S., but ratification alone will not end our problems in Iraq. Even if the constitution is ratified, the insurgents are not going to lay down their arms.

We are squandering our wealth. In many respects, to the extent that we persist in our imperial delusions, we're also going to squander our freedom...

Sometimes, when you can't fix the problem on your own, you need to make some compromises and find the partners who can get the job done for you.

Ideology makes people stupid.

It's not so much the amount of tax we pay - it's the sense that our pocket's being picked without our knowing what's going on.

As a kid I was enamored with fiction, most of it utterly forgettable and long forgotten.

If any overarching conclusion emerges from the Afghan and Iraq Wars (and from their Israeli equivalents), it's this: victory is a chimera.

I see Jenna, smiling, chattering. And failing. When you are perfect, is there anywhere else to go?

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

I'm always ready and willing to just keep pushing and working and going because it's in my spirit.

What comprises good performance? The ability through singing or playing to make the ear conscious of the true content and affect of a composition.

What marks a writer is this: until she - or he, of course - writes down whatever happened, turns it into a story, it hasn't really happened, it hasn't shape, form, reality.

The suspicious mind believes more than it doubts. It believes in a formidable and ineradicable evil lurking in every person.

I'm not the marrying kind -" St. Vincent snorted. "No man is. Marriage is a female invention.

Sin is not just action. It's life direction.

I don't want to be size zero and I'm glad I'm not.

Except that my father got a raise, and my mother didn't because she doesn't get paid for housework, and my sister stopped reading those self-esteem books because she met a new boy