Americans want to be protected, but not at the cost of vitiating the values that make us Americans.

I feel like I owe it to the readers to try to pull back the veil and give them the honest version of what's going on. But it's not more fun. If Obama, as he does sometimes already, gets a little snippy with me about something I've written, you're thinking, 'Oh God, the president of the United States is already annoyed with me.'

I find having a column a very difficult form of journalism. I'm not a natural like Tom Friedman and Anna Quindlen.

Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

The sounds of silence are a dim recollection now, like mystery, privacy and paying attention to one thing — or one person — at a time.

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

Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk.