Quotes from Maureen Dowd

Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

As much as anybody since George Wallace or Pat Buchanan, he has overtly sent dog whistles of race out to white working-class voters. That gratuitous defamation of group after group, person after person, is just anathema to Obama. He genuinely believes this guy would be a calamity for the country." Unlike the Bushes, who outsourced their political thuggery, Donald Trump does his own wet work. "He

My mom] long ago advised me, when I was feeling blue or self-doubting about men, that the best thing to do was go out and buy a red lipstick or a red dress. 'It will be your red badge of courage,' she said.

So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine.

Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles.

Trump is the Kim Kardashian of American politics, replacing substance with solipsism and issues debates with Twitter feuds, and showing a rare talent for grabbing the attention of an ADD nation round the clock as he tries to be Troll in Chief. "Celebrity

Given the electoral history of the Republicans since Nixon's Southern Strategy, winning races by stirring up racist, homophobic and misogynist feelings, it was rich to see them criticizing Trump for those qualities. They simply wanted a nominee who would be a more subtle bigot, as party tradition demands. The

We have an out-of-control id taunting a tightly controlled superego. We have the king of winging it versus the queen of homework. She says he's too unpredictable to be president, he says she's too predictable. Trump can excite his crowds but falters on substance; Hillary has substance but falters on exciting her crowds. "The boor versus the bore," Time's Charlotte Alter call it.

The Clintons want to do big worthy things, but they also want to squeeze money from rich people wherever they live on planet Earth, insatiably gobbling up cash for politics and charity and themselves from the same incestuous swirl.

The guilty pleasure I miss most when I'm out slogging on the campaign trail is the chance to sprawl on the chaise and watch a vacuously spunky and generically sassy chick flick.

The Republican game is hilariously transparent: if Obama doesn't shift to more muscular postures, he's not a patriot. If he does, he's a flip-flopper.

One must not attempt to justify them, but rather to sense their nature simply and clearly.

Obama sees himself as such a huge change that he can be cautious about other societal changes. But what he doesn't realize is that legalizing gay marriage is like electing a black president. Before you do it, it seems inconceivable. Once it's done, you can't remember what all the fuss was about.

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

Everybody is continuously connected to everybody else on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, on Reddit, e-mailing, texting, faster and faster, with the flood of information jeopardizing meaning. Everybody's talking at once in a hypnotic, hyper din: the cocktail party from hell.

I think the evangelicals think they're in a holy war now.

If wit is the most sophisticated form of humor, pranks are the most juvenile.

It is men's worst fear, personally and professionally, that women will pin the sin on them.

Are women necessary? Not with Ava around

Women are affected by lunar tides only once a month; men have raging hormones every day.

Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful.

When I need to work up my nerve to write a tough column, I try to think of myself as Emma Peel in a black leather catsuit.

Journalism, spooked by rumors of its own obsolescence, has stopped believing in itself. Groans of doom alternate with panicked happy talk.

And as far as doing God's work, I think the bankers who took government money and then gave out obscene bonuses are the same self-interested sorts Jesus threw out of the temple.