“I think Eleanor Roosevelt always had a most incredible comfort writing letters. I mean, she was in the habit of writing letters. And that’s where she allowed her fantasies to flourish. That’s where she allowed her emotions to really evolve.”

A lot of people say that Eleanor Roosevelt wasn’t a good mother. And there are two pieces to that story. One is, when they were very young, she was not a good mother. She was an unhappy mother.

And the correspondence between them that we have, I mean, she says, “I cannot believe you’re not going to say one word.” And she writes to Walter White, “I’ve asked FDR to say one word. Perhaps he will.” But he doesn’t. And these become very bitter disagreements.

Politics is not an isolated, individualist adventure. Women really need to emerge as a power to be the countervailing power to the men.

She really is a completely different First Lady. Eleanor Roosevelt was not going to suffer and withdraw in the White House. And I think he’s a very different President. He does not want his wife to suffer and withdraw in the White House. And they really are partners.

There’s very little private time with the children in the early years. Actually, there’s much more private time with the children in the 20s.

One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt.

By 1938, Eleanor Roosevelt was so angry at FDR’s policies, she writes a book called This Troubled World. And it is actually a point-by-point rebuttal of her husband’s foreign policy. We need collective security. We need a World Court.

She writes an article which becomes an article she writes in different ways over and over and over again: Women need to organize. They need to create their own bosses. They need to have support networks and gangs so that they are a force.

I think that Hick was in love with Eleanor, and Eleanor was in love with Hick. I think it’s very important to look at the letters that are in my book, because unlike some of the recent published letters.

We need something like the League of Nations. We need to work together to fight fascism. We need embargoes against aggressor nations, and we need to name aggressor nations. All of which is a direct contradiction of FDR’s policies.

Eleanor Roosevelt loved to write. She was a wonderful child writer. I mean, she wrote beautiful essays and stories as a child. And Marie Souvestre really appreciated Eleanor Roosevelt’s talents and encouraged her talents.

I think FDR was very dashing and charming and debonair, and probably reminded her of her father. A great bon-vivant. He loved to party.

I think her Grandmother Hall gave her a great sense of family love, and reassurance. Her grandmother did love her, like her father, unconditionally. And despite the order and the discipline – and home at certain hours and out at certain hours and reading at certain hours,

And during the campaign of 1936, she writes that she and her brother would always rather be out doing things when they’re sick, rather than take to their beds.

And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn’t bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn’t.

You know, unloved, judged harshly, never up to par. And she was her father’s favorite, and her mother’s unfavorite. So her father was the man that she went to for comfort in her imaginings.

You must forge your own path for it to mean anything.

I have the impression that when we talk so confidently of liberty, we are unaware of the awful … servitude of poverty when means are so small that there is literally no choice at all.

Don’t be discouraged by writer’s block. Writer’s block just means you need to listen to other music.

The late ’90s were a really bad time for people trying to be rock stars, you know what I mean? It seemed like everyone was a one-hit wonder on the radio.

So the prelude to ‘Ghostfacers!’ is the Ghostfacers going, ‘Yeah, those fat-cat writers, we’ve got a show that’s better than that bullshit anyway.’ I mean, that’s pretty cool in the world of metanarrative, which is, I have to admit, one of my abiding passions.

I think most people, even if they say they hate horror movies, there’s that feeling you get inside that you love.

The second time I was there I met Marcel Duchamp, and we immediately fell for each other. Which doesn’t mean a thing because I think anybody who met Marcel fell for him.

It just means that if someone hates you, they still have feelings for you. If they really didn’t care about you, they’d just forget about you. They wouldn’t even waste the time hating you.