The institutions of college athletics exist primarily as unreality fueled by deceit. The unreality is that universities should be in the business of providing large spectacles of mass entertainment. The fundamental absurdity of that notion requires the promulgation of the various deceits necessary to carry it out.

Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

As a writer, I have to admit, there is something darkly compelling about Alzheimer's because it attacks the two things most central to a writer's craft - language and memory, which together make up an individual's identity. Alzheimer's makes a new character out of a familiar person.

It's better to be black than gay because when you're black you don't have to tell your mother.

The idea that America elected a black man to be its president forty years after it declined to allow Martin Luther King Jr. to stand on a balcony without getting shot still maintains its power to awe and inspire.

In order to get big things done, sometimes, presidents have to be deft at moving the pea around under the shells.

The man is the Piltdown Man of modern politics.