The President [Barack Obama], I think if you look at it from his shoes, you know, was facing a very difficult situation where he had to own Washington, tame New York, save a collapsing economy, with a collapsed financial system. He moved, I think, to a team that he felt was tried and true, in terms of dealing with financial crisis. That was his decision.

Choose your words meticulously and then let them rumble up from some deep furnace of conviction.

The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot.

Confidence is the immaterial residue of material actions. Confidence is the public face of competence.

Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin.

If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again

Message matters. Message matters almost as much as actions.