You don't say, like the Bush crowd, 'I got this guy over here and I don't like him and I'm gonna get him, whether you back me or not.'

Keep your enemies in front of you.

It doesn't serve an American interest. It really doesn't really serve Israeli interests - it serves the interests of the political party that's getting the votes of the settlers on the West Bank.

The difference between me and them is that I'll look at Jesse Jackson and I'll see four Jesse Jacksons, and they'll just see one, the clown ambulance chaser.

We supported the contras. We're not against all opposition to government, or all paramilitary operations.

C'mon. He'd be embarrassing upstairs at the White House. So I think she'd have a hard time. I think a woman president would have to be very conservative to get elected.

I can't find a reason to be for this war. I've looked, and I can't, so I'm not.

My audience is much more center right, or centrist.

Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is, 'We are above that now. We're not just parochial, we're not just chauvinistic, we're not just provincial. We stand for something.' I mean, in a way, Obama's standing above the country, above - above the world. He's sort of God. He's going to bring all different sides together.

I don't believe he had a responsibility to even answer that question - you have no responsibility to answer personal questions that people have no right to ask you.

Unity is the most important thing on the road to stamping out terror. You need global rules of law and order, and they have to be enforced. Start with that principle.

Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?

I mean, if somebody said to me, junior year of college, you can go anywhere, your old man's paying for it, I'd have been gone in a flash. But I had to work. Every summer my mother would say, 'Get that job and hold on to it until August 30.'

Then the administration tied it in to the regional dispute between Israel and its enemies, as if that's about international terrorism. No, it's not.

We've always had a dual role in the region - friend of Israel, and honest broker. We've given up the honest broker role completely.

The Democrats just don't have a foreign policy that they're willing to defend, that they're willing to use to take down the president's. We're dealing with the power of suggestion here.

Someone needs to talk sense to the president. But these people are not world travelers. This president, much as I like him, had all the opportunities in the world.

They were unable to stand up and say: "Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism."

We've got to recognize that when we march into Iraq, we're setting up the card tables in front of every university in the Arab world, the Islamic world, to recruit for al-Qaida.

I mean, the idea that Bar could have sent him off on a Grand Tour. But he wasn't the least bit interested. Why? Why isn't he interested in the world? Because here's the bad news for him: He's in the world now.

Well, the right-wing policy with regard to Israel - the people who don't want to deal with Arafat, who don't want a Palestinian state - the whole sort of right-wing view is consistent with the view toward Iraq. It's the same policy and the same people.

Just look at who won the third debate between Bush and Gore. I knew Bush won, because people liked him more. People just didn't like Gore. But all the journalists thought Gore won big, he cleaned the guy's clock.

I don't know why his lawyers didn't tell him, 'You don't have to answer any questions about your private life, Mr. President. Let them sue you. Take the heat. You don't have to answer.'

Once it was suggested that Saddam Hussein might give his weaponry to terrorists, or might use weapons himself in the region, then it became hard for the Democrats to say, 'Well, that can't happen.'

I know one thing: There are a billion Islamic people in the world today, and there will be about 2 billion by the time we're dead. They're not going to give up their religion.

You know, there were 29 Democratic votes for censure in the Senate. And if the Republicans had any sense, they would have censured him before the '98 midterm election, and they would have won the election.

I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.

You don't say, like the Bush crowd, 'I got this guy over here and I don't like him and I'm gonna get him, whether you back me or not.'

And on the war, I think my numbers would be a lot higher if I were out there beating the drum for this war. In fact, I don't think it, I know it. But I can't be for the war.

I tell my staff, we're riding a tour bus around, and we're going to stop and look at some weird stuff - but we're taking our viewers around safely. They're just looking out the window at it. I'm trying to create a sense of comfort for my center audience.

You don't know whether he's thought through how this is going to affect the Middle East.

Sarah Palin - now don't laugh - is writing a book. Not just reading a book, writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she's 'collaborating' on a book. What an embarrassment! It's one of these 'I told you,' books that jocks do.

And then there's Israel - a lot of people support Israel, and it's important to Israel to take out Iraq. So it's all mixed together. It's a combination of motives.

Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant.

They were unable to stand up and say: 'Here's our policy. It's Unite the world against terrorism.'

There are some rights that are so fundamental to our society that you'd think the public debate would be closed on them. The right of every American citizen to vote - regardless of age, race, or income level - is one of them.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears form the eyes of woman.

The world is not flat, and PCs are not, in the hierarchy of human needs, in the first five rungs.

Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold.

Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

In some sense, I'm a romantic. I like the idea of organic history and tradition.

I think that if there's some innovative entrepreneurs out there who can help teach people how they can cost-effectively help themselves and their planet, I think everybody would be for it. That's going to be the challenge - figuring a way to get the marketplace and commerce to teach us consumers another way.

The real question is whether all your pondering and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That's what it all comes down to.

Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the 'market.' I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone - that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote 'Forgetting Elena,' the first novel I got published.

I wish I could sing or play an instrument.

I don't hang out at trendy Hollywood bars.

Direct mail was the basis of a lot of new Right organizations in the '70s and early '80s, and it actually led to the downfall of the majority of them. It's very expensive, and you end up putting your organization more and more in debt if you're not successful with it.

What I've always lacked is a really strong band to back me up.

I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn't quite call me a rare-book collector. But I did once work in a rare-books library, and I wrote a novel about a rare book.