Quotes from Mark Halperin

What happens when you let go, when your strength leaves you and you sink into darkness, when there's nothing that you or anyone else can do, no matter how desperate you are, no matter how you try? Perhaps it's then, when you have neither pride nor power, that you are saved, brought to an unimaginably great reward.

It was Bill Clinton who once pithily captured the contrast between the two parties when it came to selecting a presidential standard-bearer: Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line.

One way of seeing all this was as a symptom of postmillennial decay, the degradation of public discourse, and the encroachment of celebrity worship into the arena of national affairs. Another way of looking at it was as an indication of the GOP's state of disarray. Then there was the way Trump perceived the thing: as a manifestation of his magnificence...

Heading into the race, the perception among political professionals and the press had been that the rival campaign squadrons were more or less evenly matched. But as the smoke cleared, a consensus quickly emerged that the Democrats had methodically been building an atomic clock while the Republicans were trifling with Tinkertoys. Chicago's mockery of Boston was hushed but withering.

One voice can change a room. And if it can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.

Standing in the shadow of the most prodigious political and fund-raising apparatus the Democratic Party had ever seen, [Biden] felt like a stranger to it, as if he'd walked into an opulent wedding where he knew no one.

The unwillingness of the rich guy to take advantage of being a rich guy for fear of looking like a rich guy was a chain of logic too Ouroborosian to ponder for too long.

We have nobody in Washington that sits back and says, 'You're not going to raise that fucking price!'" And the Chinese: "Listen, you motherfuckers, we're going to tax you 25 percent!

You have to be willing to lose to win, and you're going to lose a lot"—a lot of votes, a lot of states. "No one gets elected president without being humiliated. How you deal with the humiliation is the key.

New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, qualified for the label -- but he was a divorced, pro-choice, pro-gay, anti-gun, Jewish plutocrat who had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican to Independent as nonchalantly as if he'd been changing his loafers.

The campaign was moving cash around the country as if it were monopoly money.

ripe to hit the fairway. The famously competitive

Romney spent the next twenty-four hours with McCain, traipsing with him from Manchester to Peterborough to Salem, agog at his inability to complete three sentences without dropping an f-bomb. (Romney employed prim substitutes for profanities: "blooming" for "fucking," "grunt" for "shit.")

The press would've guillotined her on the spot and played soccer with her severed head.

The unfolding scene was a semiotician's fantasia.

Democrats want to fall in love; Republicans just fall in line.

Focus first on where you want to be, and why, and then on the right path to get there.

Sufficient sleep, exercise, healthy food, friendship, and peace of mind are necessities, not luxuries.