I don't know that Donald Trump is anything more to Putin than what Lenin called a poleznye durak, a useful idiot.

The Communist Party apparatus was the most gigantic mafia the world has ever known.

The one thing I'm quite critical of Hillary Clinton for, and it obviously hurt her, is that at some level, the Clintons had to know that she was going to run for president. Why did they feel it necessary to make tens of millions of dollars with speaking engagements? They must have known that it would look grotesque. The word for it is "buckraking." It's beyond me. I don't understand it.

I left Gorbachev's office thinking that everything about him was outsized: his achievements, his mistakes, and, now, his vanity and bitterness.

I'm a journalist - I'm not Robert Caro. I have a day job, and a pretty consuming one - a joyfully consuming one.

Democratic institutions, even in the oldest operating democracy in the world, are anything but perfect.

I have to always remember, writing is really hard.