The people who visit the [Lincoln] memorial always look like an advertisement for democracy, so bizarrely, suspiciously diverse that one time I actually saw a man in a cowboy hat standing there reading the Gettysburg Address next to a Hasidic Jew. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had linked arms with a woman in a burka and a Masai warrior, to belt out ‘It’s a Small World After All,’ flanked by a chorus line of nuns and field-tripping, rainbow-skinned schoolchildren

The only people who know about me are people who would know about me.

You know, it's always good to have a synonym just for variety.

That's what I like to call him, "the current president." I find it difficult to say or type his name, George W. Bush. I like to call him "the current president" because it's a hopeful phrase, implying that his administration is only temporary.

Even writers need relief from words.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

In death, you get upgraded into a saint no matter how much people hated you in life.