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

[Barack Obama] says at one point, "[Jimmy] Carter, [Bill] Clinton and I suffer from," what he called, "the policy wonk's disease."

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.

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.

Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.

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.

Younger colleagues tended to draw untested self-confidence from their bonuses and prestigious degrees.