By early 1943, the Pentagon was complete-a building big enough to house forty thousand people and all their accoutrements, the largest building in the world, conceived, funded, designed and constructed in a little more than a year. And on the day it was finished, it was already too small.

People have the illusion that all over the world, all the time, all kinds of fantastic things are happening. When in fact, over most of the world, most of the time, nothing is happening.

We can look forward to four more years of wonderful, inspirational speeches full of wit, poetry, music, love and affection, plus more goddamn nonsense.

Nobody in TV makes as much money as Robert Redford, who likes to make movies for several million dollars only on the condition that they contain some sort of social message. I cannot take very seriously a social message delivered by an actor who is paid nine million dollars to deliver it, and who charges you five dollars to see it.

In the nineteenth century, government agencies in Washington had, almost without exception, flatly refused to hire even one female.

In the forties [1940s] in Washington it was still unusual for a rich and socially well-connected married woman to work. If she did, her husband was assumed by his peers to be unable to support a household on his own and somehow to be inadequate.

Washington is a pool of money surrounded by people who want some.