I can't summarize my favorite movie, Jacques Tati's 'Play Time.' You just have to see it.

I'm just a Bolshevik with a laptop.

I look to historians for their power to illuminate not just the invisible lineaments of the present, but also that which is not present. What are the roads that were not taken that most shape our own time?

There's a lot of surplus rage from the '60s that was never really worked through publicly. I think a lot of that rage still exists, and I think you see that when John McCain runs a commercial that beats up on Hillary Clinton's earmark for a Woodstock museum.

My liberal friends love to dismiss Reagan. You know, they'll say something like, 'Oh, didn't he, like, only read one-page memos when he was in the White House?' Well, that's just good managerial practice. I mean, Franklin Roosevelt made people write one-page memos.

My favorite movie of all time is 'Rocky.'