“Lincoln -- they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me. So democracy has never been for the faint of heart.”

“We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.”

“Democracies are dangerous forms of government. They always become dictatorships; and they almost always talk about this universal health care.”

“Guiltily people will always think that you are talking bad about them, so do not talk to yourself in the mirror.”

“This may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about.. when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me.”

“I think the author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who talks about her own children.”

“Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.”

“When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.”

“Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don't talk about what democracy means — what it bestows on us — the revolutionary idea that it isn't just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.”

“You want to talk about the fading of an icon? You never said I was an icon in the first place. But you want to talk about it in a derogatory fashion. You say the superstar has fallen. But you've never called me a superstar ever. It's only that you use these words when you want to say something derogatory.”