Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to ensure fair pay for women in the workplace. In addition, he succeeded in getting a measure passed to end discrimination against gays in the military.

Once I decide to do something, I can't have people telling me I can't. If there's a roadblock, you jump over it, walk around it, crawl under it.

I have believed in the biographies I have written. I truly can tell you that they have influenced our society politically, culturally, socially.

The rumors of Frank Sinatras violence and his ties to organized crime were such that journalists joked in print about me ending up in concrete boots and sleeping with the fishes if I proceeded to write his biography.

I would love to do an unauthorized biography about Congress. It's like a secret society up there.

I admired Eugene McCarthy’s courage and although I left his Senate staff after four years to accept a job as the researcher on the editorial page of the Washington Post, I remained an admirer.

The difference between authorized and unauthorized biographies is the difference between riding in carriage or squatting in steerage.