As a woman, I know that if I write about another woman, it will be perceived as a catfight.

F.D.R. achieved greatness not by means of imposing his temperament and intellect on the world but by reacting to what the world threw at him.

For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both.

I don't understand men. I don't even understand what I don't understand about men.

IT is an astonishing thing that historians will look back and puzzle over, that in the 21st century, American women were such hunted creatures. Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns.

The Mayans were right, as it turns out, when they predicted the world would end in 2012. It was just a select world: the G.O.P. universe of arrogant, uptight, entitled, bossy, retrogressive white guys. [...] Instead of smallpox, plagues, drought and Conquistadors, the Republican decline will be traced to a stubborn refusal to adapt to a world where poor people and sick people and black people and brown people and female people and gay people count.

I think even the Hollywood money people are saying they've got to get the party back from the Clinton wing. They can't, you know, keep nominating these Northeast liberals. They have to look for people who can win.