“That place, Mr. President, is not your place. Your place is with the victims of the SS.”

This was the third time I’d put the question to him, in one form or another. The first time, a month earlier in this same cabin, he’d had a lot of trouble getting his mind around the idea that I, not he, was president. He’d started by saying something he knew to be dull and expected but that—he insisted—was nevertheless perfectly true. “Here is what I would tell you,” he’d said. “I would say that your first and principal task is to think about the hopes and dreams the American people invested in you. Everything you are doing has to be viewed through this prism. And I tell you what every president … I actually think every president understands this responsibility. I don’t know George Bush well. I know Bill Clinton better. But I think they both approached the job in that spirit.” Then he added that the world thinks he spends a lot more time worrying about political angles than he actually does.
Michael Lewis, "Obama's Way" https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2012/10/michael-lewis-profile-barack-obama, Vanity Fair, (October 2012).
2012

Source: "Too Much Happiness", in Too Much Happiness (2009)

Source: Studies in Nature and Literature

On Abortion; quoted in "MPs back 24-week abortion limit," http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7409696.stm BBC News 20 May 2008

Pilgrim’s Regress 90
The Pilgrim's Regress (1933)

Source: Macbeth

Source: Rebel Angels

To an old friend who demanded a place in his cabinet
"One Man's Cup of Coffee," Time Magazine profile (June 30, 1961)