"My job is to be a spokesman - the spokesman, I suppose - for the President, for the White House, to do the daily briefings, to manage the press corps in terms of travel, day-to-day needs, access, interviews, all those issues."

"Having a sense of humor has served me more than it has hurt me - just in the sense that it has allowed me to keep my sanity."

"This is a generation weaned on Watergate, and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead, there is a presumption that, without relentless scrutiny, the government will misbehave."

"As long as the G.O.P., led by its increasingly visible women, continues to insist that the problem is not their policies but women's failure to understand their own lives and interests, the gender gap won't go away."

"One reason so few of us achieve what we truly want is that we never direct our focus we never concentrate our power. Most people dabble their way through life, never deciding to master anything in particular."

"Silence is a source of great strength."

"The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words."

"The test of character in leadership is how one behaves in moments of unvarnished power."