Writing a novel is one of those modern rites of passage I think that lead us from an innocent world of contentment drunkenness and good humor to a state of chronic edginess and the perpetual scanning of bank statements.

In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity no humor no overstatement can quite extinguish the physicists have known sin and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

I am encouraged that there's going to be much better dialogue between the federal government and the state of Arizona. I mean I hope that's not wishful thinking.

We need to recognise that the whole edifice of our fifth estate of our journalism has been built on a foundation of newspaper journalism and that that foundation is crumbling. The management of the media companies will deny that the end is nigh. I hope they are right.

The comfortable estate of widowhood is the only hope that keeps up a wife's spirits.

I hope that just what I sing about and how I relate to my audience is as much of a political statement as I need to make.

We're in an emergency situation. The United States has become an absolutely terrifying country and I would hope that I could participate in some way in stopping the horror and the brutality.

Certain it is that a great responsibility rests upon the statesmen of all nations not only to fulfill the promises for reduction in armaments but to maintain the confidence of the people of the world in the hope of an enduring peace.

You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy or given up all hope of the Presidency.

The myth of the liberal media empowers conservatives to control debate in the United States to the point where liberals cannot even hope for a fair shake anymore.

I told the President I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them they are not going to sit down and talk.

People tend to overstate my resilience but of course I hope they're right.

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire Barack Obama is president of the United States is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again.

Hope is a feeling that life and work have meaning. You either have it or you don't regardless of the state of the world that surrounds you.

Truth is not a matter of fact but a state of harmony with progress and hope. Enveloped only in its wings will we ever soar to the promise of our greater selves.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder their Constitution a miracle their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

Men can have a huge turnover of sponsorship and still survive a lot better than the women. But the women's ratings are better at least at home in the United States than in the men's tennis.

In all honesty at that time I never saw myself as an author... I was just a Mom in a state of panic trying to enter a short story contest to win the prize money in order to keep the lights on in my home.

I consider myself a product of Alaska. The love and the debt that I feel to my home state you always want your hometown to be the proudest of you.

There are 80 million moms in the United States. Forty million stay at home with their children.

At home you always have to be a politician when you're abroad you almost feel yourself a statesman.

I just get so fed up with seeing the same things written about me. If I see the words 'ice queen' attached to me I feel like banging my head against the wall. There's this perception that I can only be in a film if I have a glass of champagne in my hand and a stately home in the background.

It's also much clearer how much damage the occupation of Iraq is doing to America's reputation and prestige around the world and that's just starting now to hit home in the United States.

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33 000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.