We will have a more just society as soon as we want one.

The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.

A genuine approach to budget cutting - knowing exactly what you're cutting and why, and with what real-life consequences - is beyond my competence, and probably beyond the competence of any politician in America.

I am reading "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers and "Redeployment" by Phil Klay . Both Powers and Klay are Iraq War vets. Klay's stories are remarkable.

I think it's important for Americans to try to understand each other a little better.

People in Congress are willing to shut down the entire government or to make it impossible for a Supreme Court nominee to get a hearing or for routine appointments in the executive branch to go unfilled for years because of a hold placed by a senator.

The literature of the Spanish Civil War is also important to me. Above all George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" as well as the writing of John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway. They worked on a film together in Spain during that war, which ended their friendship.