Once the day's work starts there is little chance to walk, to ride or to take part in a game. Taking walks or rides early in the morning is a lonesome business, and the inevitable Secret Service guard when the president leaves the White House grounds is not enlivening company.
The last book I read to my mom was 'Barbara Bush: A Memoir' published by mom in 1994. It reflected on their entire life - dad going to China, running the CIA, running for Senate, running for President twice.
If you want to run for president, you better be an athlete. It's 24/7. It never ends. You give up your personal life completely and you have something of a chance to be shot.
The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.
As the president, you're pretty much in a bubble. And golf is a good way to get out of the bubble.
I have complete confidence in Secret Service. These guys and gals are unbelievably professional. They know what they’re doing and I basically do what they tell me to do. Now, sometimes I’m the first one to admit that it chafes a little bit being inside this bubble. It’s the hardest adjustment of being president, not being able to just take a walk.
Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.
Presidents live and work in a house of history. They dwell with ghosts. Present power and the weight of the past are ambient realities of daily life in the presidency, and the two are intimately connected.
President Obama said in an interview over the weekend that he really misses being anonymous. He said, 'I miss Saturday mornings rolling out of bed and not shaving, going to the market...' Be careful what you wish for, 2012 is just around the corner!
When you run for president, and become president, they just rip you apart. Every facade of privacy that you have is gone. I think everybody believes that, to some extent, you can maintain privacy. And I think in the end, everybody gets proven wrong.
After the White House, what is there to do but drink?
Democrats want to peer into every second of President Trump's life, hoping to find a smoking gun.
We spend less time with each other now than we did during the presidency. When you're president, you're usually out and back in the same day - at least I was. I just came from a trip to the Middle East last week, where I was gone for five nights, and when I left, Laura [Bush] was out of town.
President Obama , I guess, is starting to confess to some of his anxieties. In a recent interview, President Obama said, 'I miss being anonymous.' He said, 'In the old days, I could blend in with all the other Hawaiian Barack Hussein Obamas.'
I think I'm the only president other than John Kennedy who had both parents alive during the presidency.
You know, one day you're being briefed on world affairs and asked to make decisions, and the next, you're in Crawford, Texas ... and the biggest decision is when do you go mountain bike riding.
There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.
I am still in touch with my Secret Service agents, most of whom are retired now. They really get to be your friends. They watched me grow up, and most of them had little kids, so I was kind of giving them a warm-up of what was coming.
One of the penalties of being president of the United States is that you must subsist for four years without drinking anything except Californian wine.
I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor.
Sometimes I wake at night in the White House and rub my eyes and wonder if it is not all a dream.
In the last year of my presidency, I travelled 200 days out of 365. You have to lead a very disciplined life. To be able to do that, I need a lot of sleep. But I have no problems sleeping. On long days, I can easily take a nap for 20 minutes in the afternoon.
Interpreting anyone's marriage - a neighbor's, let alone the president's - is extremely difficult. And yet, examining the first couple's relationship - their negotiations of public and private life, of conflicts and compromises - offers hints about Barack Obama the president, not just Barack Obama the husband.
I write about presidents. That means I write about guys - so far. I'm interested in the people closest to them, the people they love and the people they've lost... I don't want to limit it to what they did in the office, but what happens at home and in their interactions with other people.
The toughest part of being President is that you have to be available 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year.
