JON LOVETT

Most of my time at the White House, I wrote very unfunny speeches, but every year, I would work on the correspondents' dinner, which was a reminder of this other kind of writing that I loved to do.

We have a lot of really boring, silly, stupid politics. We need people to point that out.

I don't know the venture fund terms. I don't know what a seed round is. I want nothing to do with it.

Regardless of how lyrical or rhetorically gifted they are in conveying big ideas, any candidate can do a good job of giving a speech if the goal of a speech is more than just delivering it well but achieving some end, whether it's convincing people of some issue or persuading them about you as a person.

I am a deeply awkward person; I am not cool.

One of the hardest lessons of childhood is reckoning with the instability of the world.

It's certainly true that presidents have confidantes who rise above what you would call just staff.

I'm motivated by a bottomless well of anger. It's a joke, but I don't think I don't mean it.

There is that definition of leadership that says, 'Leadership is convincing people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't have done because you've made them believe it's the right thing to do.' And a great speech can do that.

Washington is filled with people making other people's arguments for money.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. That's what you have to do: you have to be confident in your potential and aware of your inexperience.

The great thing about writing jokes for President Obama is that he is not afraid to tell jokes that are actually funny - and not just funny for a politician.

Part of my job as a presidential speechwriter (along with great writers like Jon Favreau and David Axelrod) was finding that sliver where 'presidential' and 'actually funny' overlap.

We don't want people to be afraid of saying something interesting on the off chance it's taken the wrong way.

Republicans paint everything that Democrats have been for as socialism, too far to the left, as extreme, and it didn't matter how moderated it was; it didn't matter that Obamacare started out as a compromise. You might as well say what you're actually for and show what you really are.

A great speech can make you remember something about what you believe, about who you are, about who you want to be. It's rare when that kind of thing happens. But it is important, and it is real.

More and more people support equality for their gay friends and neighbors, and that is not because the 'Duck Dynasty' guy almost lost his show.

It doesn't matter what the early votes look like. It doesn't matter what the polls look like. We can lose everything.

Making '1600 Penn' was really fun, and I learned a lot.

We need to stop telling each other to shut up. We need to get comfortable with the reality that no one is going to shut up.

I would like to be able to write in my own voice.

The conversation on Twitter and the way people are in the world are very different.

I had never really planned on being a speechwriter.

It is extremely chilling that Donald Trump views the spectacle of choosing cabinet appointments in a way that is similar to deciding whether or not to fire Lil Jon or Joan Rivers.

One of the lessons of 2016 is to spend less time worrying about what will happen and more time worrying about what we want to happen.