Lincoln's ability to retain his emotional balance in such difficult situations was rooted in actute self-awareness and an enormous capacity to dispel anxiety in constructive ways.

I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the country's cause.

The past is not simply the past, but a prism through which the subject filters his own changing self-image.

she said. ''I don't want to sound embarrassing, but he looks sensual.

'The bully pulpit' is somewhat diminished in our age of fragmented attention and fragmented media.

My recurring nightmare is that someday I will be faced with a panel: Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson all of whom will be telling me everything I got wrong about them. I know that Johnson's out there saying, 'Why is it that what you wrote about the Kennedys is twice as long as the book you wrote about me?'