“Asked who attacked America on 9/11, [Sarah Palin] suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein.”

“You have two choices, [Plouffe] told Obama. You can stay in the Senate, enjoy your weekends at home, take regular vacations, and have a lovely time with your family. Or you can run for president, have your whole life poked at and pried into, almost never see your family, travel incessantly, bang your tin cup for donations like some street-corner beggar, lead a lonely, miserable life.”

“If you think all these terrible things about Obama, he asked the woman, how can you possibly be undecided?Because if McCain dies, Palin would be president, she said.”

“What happens when you let go, when your strength leaves you and you sink into darkness, when there's nothing that you or anyone else can do, no matter how desperate you are, no matter how you try? Perhaps it's then, when you have neither pride nor power, that you are saved, brought to an unimaginably great reward.”

“We are the makers of history, not its victims.”

“The milk of human kindness was kept often in the larder, and the tea served with lemon.”

“Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real.”