Nothing is more powerful than the black church experience. A good choir and a good sermon in the black church, it's pretty hard not to be move and be transported.

Even those who claim the Bible's inerrancy make distinctions between Scriptural edicts, sensing that some passages - the Ten Commandments, say, or a belief in Christ's divinity - are central to Christian faith, while others are more culturally specific and may be modified to accommodate modern life.

There is a big part of me that has a writer's sensibility. And so that's how I think. That's how I pursue truth. That's how I hope to communicate truth to people.

The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.

I'm not so optimistic as to think that you would ever be able to garner a majority of an American Congress that would make those kinds of investments above and beyond the kinds of investments that could be made in a progressive program for lifting up all people.

You [as a president] have to have a strong team around you. You have to have respect for institutions and the process to make good decisions because you are inherently reliant on other folks.

When you've got little kids, and you're tucking them in. When you open a door and they're in their pajamas and they're, you know, wrestling with you and asking you, you know, to read to them and stuff, [The white House] starts feeling like home pretty quick. Not to mention having a mother-in-law upstairs, and the dog, and now two.