Anna Quindlen Quotes

Ed Miliband is obviously a mild guy. I don't expect him to pretend to be a pugilist.

Our presidents have been getting to be synthetic monsters, the work of a hundred ghost- writers and press agents so that it is getting harder and harder to discover the line between the man and the institution.

To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Hillary Clinton doesn't have a prayer. She does not make people feel good. She doesn't have the ability. She doesn't have the ability to be humble. It's just not in her. I mean, she's the Palace of Versailles every day in and out, and that's it.

The thing about Barack Obama, just from being around him, is he's cooler than the other politicians, but just nerdy enough to do the job. Like you can't be really cool and be the president.

We're looking at two different presidents here if all we have to go on is the media. When Donald Trump is in Washington, D.C., what is he? He is a genuine idiot. He's impolitic, he's uninformed, he's running a chaotic administration where nobody knows what anybody is doing. Whenever they do anything it is disastrous. But the Donald Trump of Washington doesn't exist, because the Donald Trump of Washington is what is reported in the Drive-By Media.

Humor gives presidents the chance to be seen as warm, relaxed persons. Humor reaches out and puts its arm around the listener and says, 'I am one of you, I understand,' and implicitly it promises, 'I will do something about your problems.'

Hillary Clinton's not seen as empathetic and compassionate.

Everyone assumes I've become this nice person overnight since joining the 'X Factor,' and before that, I was an aggressive, violent chav that just goes around attacking people and swearing every five minutes. It's just brought to the fore certain qualities that were always there.

I think it's funny when stereotypes happen.

A campaign adviser can change the outside appearance of the candidate, but the ideology and personality of the candidate remains the same.

White House staff spends enormous amounts of time planning a president's every move so that his public persona reflects the mood of the public.

I don't look presidential. I don't wear, you know, three-piece suits and have my hair perfectly coiffed.

Historically, the most favorably viewed figure in any administration is the first lady, regardless of her husband's popularity. That is largely because first ladies avoid the political fray and are ritualistically presented as a warm, human presence in the White House.

President Obama is a poker player, which the media used as part of the narrative that he was more calculated and careful as a politician.

People who think they know me would be surprised that my whole life doesn't revolve around sex.

When I was signed, at the age of 23...the fact that I presented myself as an out gay man was very, very unusual.

Hillary Clinton doesn't look presidential.

Consider the Donald Trump that you have seen and watched in Saudi Arabia and now in Israel. Contrast that with the president you see and hear reported on in Washington. The two men don't even look remotely similar. This trip should not be possible. The news coming out of this trip should not be possible based on what everybody is saying about Trump in Washington. Incompetent, boorish, impolitic, rude, mean, all those things.

Politics is not really politics any more. It is run, for the most part, by Madison Avenue advertising firms, who sell politicians to the public the way they sell bars of soap or cans of beer.

Some good souls found The Candidate cynical. I wonder what they'll think when they read this portrait of the real-life Jerry Brown... This is the book that could force the little fox into the open.

I once gave a workshop and I asked the women poets there, If you went back to that little town you've come from - these were from small towns - would you say, I'm a poet? And one of them said, If I said I was a poet in that town, they'd think I didn't wash my windows. And that stayed with me for so long, the sense of the collective responsibility of someone as against the individual thing it takes to be a poet.

In politics, reality and appearance are of equal importance. You cannot attend to one and neglect the other. A man must determine both what he is, and what others believe him to be.

There's damsels in distress out there, and we got all this beer.

The more people learn about them (Obama and Hillary) and how they handle the pressure, the more their support will evaporate.