Quotes from Molly Ivins

Truly, if you can't cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you should not be covering a presidential campaign.

Rush Limbaugh's pathetic abuse of logic, his absurd pomposity, his relentless self-promotion, his ridiculous ego - now those, friends, are appropriate targets for satire.

I wouldn't say that dittoheads, as a group, lack the ability to reason. It's just that whenever I run across one, he seems to be at a low ebb in reasoning skills.

If you grew up white before the civil rights movement anywhere in the South, all grown-ups lied. They'd tell you stuff like, 'Don't drink out of the colored fountain, dear, it's dirty.' In the white part of town, the white fountain was always covered with chewing gum and the marks of grubby kids' paws, and the colored fountain was always clean.

If Bush does make it to the White House, he and Laura should have Ken Starr over for dinner.

It's a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there.

A teenage foot that never tapped to 'Heartbreak Hotel' in the '50s probably belonged to a hopeless grind.

The greatest moral leader of my lifetime was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose private life does not bear close examination.

Should a girl like me, in whom the milk of human kindness flows copiously for everyone, from protein-shy Hottentots to the glandular obese, actually aim a few swift boots at the prone form of Sen. Phil Gramm? Nah. But it's tempting.

The idols of one's adolescence tend to endure - you never forget how you worshipped them.

I want to point out, there are a lot of politicians who enjoy the political end of politics, but they're not interested in governance. And then, there are some that are really interested in governance and are just terrible at politics.

New York is just as provincial as anyone else.

Losing a part of a breast or all of one or both has, obviously, serious psychological consequences.

There is never anyone quite so wonderful as the people who were seniors when you were a freshman.

I've always found it easier to be funny than to be serious.

How come trying to explode myths about Texas always winds up reinforcing them?

I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind, I think everybody everywhere is provincial, but it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Texcentric.

All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don't think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it's all marvelous fun.

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part and discuss it only with consenting adults.

I intensely covered Bush when he was Governor of Texas.

I never saw anything funnier than Texas politics.

Texas is still resistant to Howard Johnsons, interstate highways and some forms of phoniness. It is the place least likely to become a replica of everyplace else. It's authentically awful, comic, and weirdly charming, all at the same time.

Here's the deal on Texas. It's big. So big, there's about five distinct and different places here, separated from one another geologically, topographically, botanically, ethnically, culturally, and climatically.

One thing I have learned from Johnny Faulk, Texas, and life, is that since you don't always win, you got to learn to enjoy just fightin' the good fight.