You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.

The thing that [the Senate and the House] don't realize is that everyone wants them to come from beyond that contradiction so that we can all fix it. Nobody is saying, "We don't have a problem." Nobody is saying that, "9/11 didn't happen." What they're saying is, "We're not a fragile country, trust us to have this conversation, so that we can do this in the right way, in a more effective way."

I remember having a grade-school teacher I thought was a hard-ass. When you're that age, you think the guy is Himmler. Then you visit him eight years later and he's wearing polyester pants, he's four foot eight, you think he's gay, and you're like, 'Are you the guy I was afraid of?

Do you know what writing a book is? It's sitting alone in a room for weeks without making contact with another human. I felt like Howard Hughes.

But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist many other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign governments still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.

I kid because I'm on basic cable.

Yon Kippur. Greatest Jewish holiday ever. The Jewish day of attonement. You don't ear for one day, all your sins for the year are wiped clean. Beat that with your little Lent. What is Lent? Forty days of absolution. Forty days to one day. Even in sin you're paying retail.