One does not hold a conversation with him. One holds a symposium. – Elizabeth Drew

Richard Nixon's conversation was "loaded with so many stories of all the foreign dignitaries he'd called upon in his career that he sounded like a guy who had pinioned his neighbors into watching his vacation slides.

A good ruler has to learn his world's language, and that's different for every world, the language you don't hear just with your ears.

Horace Greeley's conversation inevitably becomes a speech.

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

As an adult, I've always found the stereotype that Jews are liberal a curious one; my parents' circle was predominantly conservative, not just on Israel but on most political issues. Most of all, they were intensely (and this is a word I remember repeating in my own angry adolescent dialogues with myself) tribal.