It is one thing to rouse the passion of a people, and quite another to lead them.

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

It's exciting to work with the kids so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying

There are many instances in which those at the uppermost levels of the White House were feeling the President [Barack Obama] was not fully informed of the flow of events and, in some cases, where policies were going in the White House.

If you write something that gets a bad response, or someone commits candor or is off message, there are often consequences almost immediately when it appears in the paper or a magazine, that somebody gets called into the boss's office. And sometimes it can result in a loss of access for the reporter.

You try to hold on to some notions you might have had before, that this will somehow work out, this is a spell that will lift or be broken.

I don't have to deal with the issues of the daily news cycle.