“The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left’s on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.”

Excessive partisanship is the problem. There has never been a democracy in the history of the world in a polity of any size where you didn’t have political parties. Even sometimes over the objections of the people who started it.

I will tell you, I’m a lousy cook, but I think I’m a pretty good judge of a good meal.

Moderate Republicans are reverse Houdinis. They tie themselves up in knots and then tell you they can’t do anything because they’re tied up in knots.

Disruption never helps your cause. … It just looks like you’re afraid to have rational discussion.

The fact that theyre a congressionally chartered group should no more incline people to give to that group than the fact that its National Pickle Month should make them eat more pickles.

I should have voted for the first Iraq war. George Bush did that one very well. I had been skeptical. I was afraid that George Bush was going to treat the first Iraq war the way his son treated the second.

Lawyers are very, very good at keeping you out of prison, but they will sacrifice your reputation and credibility to do so.

I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.

The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they’ve done the terrible things.

[Democrats] are trying on every front to increase the role of government.

There is a correlation between people who attack same-sex marriage and have difficulty maintaining their own.

What’s troubling is that the Republicans to defend Mr. DeLay are weakening the ethics process.

The issue is not that morals be applied to public policy, it’s that conservatives bring public policy to spheres of our lives where it should not enter.

We don’t get ourselves dry cleaned.

I have been mislabeled as a big advocate of low-income home ownership over rental.

If Bob Barr (conservative republican congressman from Georgia) caught on fire and I was holding a bucket of water, it would be great act of discipline to pour it on him. I would do it, but I’d hate myself in the morning.