You get steely nerves playing poker.

Every four years in the presidential election, some new precedent is broken.

If you have reason to think that yesterday's forecast went wrong, there is no glory in sticking to it.

People don't have a good intuitive sense of how to weigh new information in light of what they already know. They tend to overrate it.

Shakespeare's plays often turn on the idea of fate, as much drama does. What makes them so tragic is the gap between what his characters might like to accomplish and what fate provides them.

If the state polls are right, then Mr. Obama will win the Electoral College. If you can't acknowledge that after a day when Mr. Obama leads 19 out of 20 swing-state polls, then you should abandon the pretense that your goal is to inform rather than entertain the public.

I've become invested with this symbolic power. It really does transcend what I'm actually doing and what I actually deserve.