When you get people standing up saying, 'I'm going to just tell the truth; what do we have to fear?,' it encourages others, and it creates a counterresponse.

I think that [Barack Obama] does say something that's - that is telling on that score, when he talks about the [George W.] Bush tax cuts and the swap he makes after the midterm elections, which is he doesn't agree with the Bush tax cuts.

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

If you happened to be born on third base, you didn't rub it in the face of the guy who wasn't even born in the stadium. Self-interest was generally checked at the door with your coat and hat.

Two sons, they'll both be presidents after they win their Nobel Prizes. And the daughters, they'll be prima ballerinas before they become the president of Princeton and start their Internet company. And I just started to think about What's the conventional load of those expectations you carry around? You have to pull them out one by one and smash them in the corner. You realize the pile is quite high. But in a way, it becomes oddly liberating to do that.

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.

Every person has their pantheon - the Bible, Hollywood, Shakespeare - their way of understanding the world.