Partly what I'm writing about is the way taboos get toppled.

Good writing requires a character with a voice. Usually, the first sound bite is not the whole story.

Character is destiny, and politicians usually get the scandals they deserve, with a sense of inevitability about them.

A curious thing about this rarefied world is that bloggers are almost unfailingly contemptuous toward everyone except one another.

I've read a lot of war writing, even World War I writing, the British war poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves's memoir 'Goodbye to All That,' and a civilian memoir, 'Testament of Youth,' by Vera Brittain.

Oprah is just this goddess presiding over so much of American life, and her story is really interesting - the way she made herself, and the ruthlessness it took, and also the fantasizing that it took.