Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.
To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something - to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.
For a while there, I was a stringer. The expression comes from the old habit of stringing together the column inches that you had written. They'd measure it and pay you 10 cents an inch for your printed copy.
When I worked in Los Angeles covering hard news, very often when something important would happen I'd be off in the woods covering something unimportant, which was more interesting to me.
The biggest problem in rock journalism is that often the writer's main motivation is to become friends with the band. They're not really journalists; they're people who want to be involved in rock and roll.
I genuinely miss writing now on the rare days I don't write; my mouth waters when I think about writing, and I have an extreme physical reaction to the idea of doing it.
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.
And every book, you find, has its own social group - friends of its own it wants to introduce you to, like a party in a library that need never, ever end.
A library is such a potent symbol of a town's values: each one closed down might as well be six thousand stickers plastered over every available surface, reading "WE CHOSE TO BECOME MORE STUPID AND DULL.
My father was very chic. My mum was always encouraging me. Some parents would say, 'Why don't you be a lawyer, a doctor, or something more important?' They never said that.
You can be covered and be very sexy. It's not what you show; it's what you have in mind, the way you cross your legs, the way you talk to people.
I don't like intellectuals, or, at least, people who call themselves that way, because I am under the impression that there is always something condescending in their demeanour, and I don't like condescending people.
Amidst globalisation, trends are becoming worldwide, so it's important to take a unique approach to what fashion has to offer. Be yourself in the middle of it all; fashion shouldn't be 'try hard.'
I started wearing high heels when I first worked with Mario Testino. He is tall; I had to be at his height. And I have never stopped since then.
Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales.
I would never share my daughter's wardrobe. Every five years you have to go through your wardrobe and say, 'This is possible, this is not possible.' But you have to be happy with yourself.
When you're editor-in-chief of a big magazine, you cannot be a cover girl for MAC; you cannot be the face of Givenchy - of course you can't; it's doesn't go with the job.
When you go to a show, Americans in New York are very proper, much more so than the French. Everything is perfect. Their hair, the nails, everything. The look. Everything is perfection.
I removed 'cyberspace' from my vernacular. The idea, which I grew up with, of going into a place separate from the real world, is something my students just don't recognise.
The talk show, as a genre, has been in decline for a while. It started with Jerry Springer, when the talk shows suffered a metamorphosis, going from the real and social issues to the hair-raising.
People would write me hate letters. How dare I try to represent Hispanics when I was so white? I tried to make them see it was racism.
